[{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-08-03T14:22:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/08/03/a-maintainable-command-line-workspace-on-linux/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"Most terminal setups begin as a few helpful aliases and end up scattered across a shell profile, a terminal-emulator menu, a font download, and a handful of plugins cloned years ago. That works until you set up a new machine, connect over SSH, or need to find out why a terminal takes three seconds to open.\nThe answer is not a single perfect terminal or shell. A maintainable command-line workspace is a set of small, replaceable layers with clear ownership. You should be able to change your shell without losing your SSH configuration, replace a terminal emulator without rewriting aliases, and bootstrap a new machine without copying your entire home directory.\n","tags":["Linux","DevOps","CLI","Manjaro","Ubuntu","Cursor IDE","VS Code","Software Engineering"],"title":"A Maintainable Command-Line Workspace on Linux"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-07-31T00:40:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/07/31/modern-auth-patterns-for-angular-frontends/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":"For years, the default Angular auth tutorial looked like this: call /login, get a JWT, stash it in localStorage, attach Authorization: Bearer … from an interceptor, and sprinkle a couple of route guards on top. It ships. It demos well. And it quietly trains teams to treat the browser as a safe place for long-lived credentials.\nIt is not.\nIn 2026 the guidance has converged, and it is blunt:\nPrefer OAuth 2.0 / OIDC with a reverse proxy or dedicated auth provider — not a hand-rolled password form that mints forever-tokens for the SPA. Prefer short-lived access tokens (and refresh handled outside the SPA) over long-lived credentials in the browser. Prefer HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite cookies over storing sensitive JWTs in localStorage or sessionStorage. This post is the practical shape of that advice for Angular apps: why localStorage JWTs lose to XSS, how a Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) or reverse-proxy session keeps tokens off the client, and what Angular still owns — interceptors, CSRF headers, and guards that improve UX without pretending to enforce authorization.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Security","TypeScript","Software Architecture","OAuth","OIDC"],"title":"Modern Auth Patterns for Angular Frontends (Beyond “Just Add JWT”)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-07-29T00:41:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/07/29/why-client-side-frameworks-need-security-updates/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"At first glance, a client-side JavaScript framework looks like “just” UI code. It runs in the browser, the browser already has security boundaries, and most of the app logic is yours. So what exactly is a “security update” for that framework supposed to fix?\nThe answer is the same whether you use Angular, React, Vue, or anything else in the same role: the framework is not only application code — it is part of the security boundary. It parses templates or JSX, sanitizes HTML, protects against XSS and related request attacks, and in many apps also powers server-side rendering. If the framework makes a mistake in any of those layers, an attacker may be able to steal data, inject script, or break request isolation even though the code ultimately runs in a browser or helps render content for one.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Security","SSR","TypeScript","Software Architecture"],"title":"Why Client-Side Frameworks Need Security Updates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-07-22T00:42:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/07/22/securing-angular-pwas-in-2026/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"Progressive Web Apps sell reliability: installable shells, offline reads, background sync when the network returns. Angular’s @angular/service-worker makes that easy to turn on. Security does not get the same one-liner. A service worker sits between your app and the network with a long-lived cache — which means it can also sit between an attacker and your users’ private data if you treat “offline” as “store everything.”\nIndustry checklists already call out HTTPS everywhere, including service worker scope, and auth guidance keeps warning against patterns that inflate XSS and CSRF risk when sessions go offline. This post is the Angular-shaped version: enforce TLS and a tight SW scope, cache only what is safe to replay, and keep offline UX without parking bearer tokens in IndexedDB.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Security","TypeScript","Software Architecture","PWA","Service Workers"],"title":"Securing Angular PWAs in 2026"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-07-18T00:45:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/07/18/dependency-risk-sboms-and-automated-security-for-angular/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular apps are rarely “just Angular.” They sit on the CLI, a pile of third-party libraries, often Nx or another monorepo tool, and a lockfile that quietly doubles every quarter. That surface is where a lot of real risk lives: not in your component tree, but in a transitive package nobody reviewed last sprint.\nBest-practice write-ups keep repeating the same triad — scan regularly, automate checks in CI, and treat framework updates as security work. The missing piece for many teams is turning that advice into a pipeline that generates an SBOM, fails on high-severity CVEs, and tells humans when something broke — without waiting for someone to remember npm audit on Friday.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Security","TypeScript","Software Architecture","DevOps","CI/CD","SBOM"],"title":"Dependency Risk, SBOMs, and Automated Security for Angular"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-07-15T00:50:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/07/15/csp-and-angular-practical-patterns/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular already sanitizes template bindings. That is necessary and still not enough. XSS keeps showing up through supply-chain scripts, sanitizer edge cases, and the occasional bypassSecurityTrustHtml that “was only temporary.” Content Security Policy is the browser-level seatbelt: even if a payload reaches the DOM, the browser refuses to execute script the policy does not allow.\nCSP is repeatedly listed as a must-have for Angular apps. Many write-ups still skip the Angular-specific parts: dynamic styles the runtime injects, critical CSS inlining, autoCsp / ngCspNonce / CSP_NONCE, and the temptation to “just add unsafe-inline and unsafe-eval so the build works.”\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Security","TypeScript","Software Architecture","CSP","XSS"],"title":"Content Security Policy (CSP) and Angular: Practical Patterns"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-07-10T02:03:30+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/07/10/typescript-7-is-here-fast-exciting-worth-watching/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"TypeScript 7 has arrived, and the first reaction across the developer world is a mix of excitement, curiosity, and caution. That feels like a healthy response to a release this big.\nFor frontend developers, this is the kind of update that genuinely changes the feel of work. Faster builds, quicker feedback, and lighter editor workflows are not abstract improvements; they make coding more pleasant and less interruptive. This is also a story about reducing friction in daily developer life, not just improving benchmark numbers. In the TypeScript 7.0 announcement, Microsoft says the release can deliver major speedups, with examples from VS Code, Sentry, Bluesky, Playwright, and tldraw showing much faster builds.\n","tags":["TypeScript","Angular","Frontend","Developer Experience","Software Engineering","Tooling","Nx"],"title":"TypeScript 7 Is Here: Fast, Exciting, and Worth Watching"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-30T01:14:50+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/30/local-ai-with-ollama-aider-and-cline-on-manjaro/","readingTime":16,"section":"posts","summary":"In How to Stretch Cursor Pro Further, I argued for treating Cursor as the execution layer and routing planning, research, and cheap thinking elsewhere. Ollama got a few paragraphs — enough to explain why local models belong in the pipeline, not enough to actually set them up.\nThis post is the missing piece: install Ollama on Manjaro, pick models for your hardware, and connect local agents that can read your repo, edit files, and run commands without sending code to a cloud API.\n","tags":["Ollama","Aider","Cline","Cursor IDE","Manjaro","Linux","AI Tools","Software Engineering","Angular"],"title":"Local AI on Manjaro: Ollama, Aider, and Cline Without Another Subscription"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-29T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/29/how-to-stretch-cursor-pro-with-a-split-ai-workflow/","readingTime":23,"section":"posts","summary":"I use Cursor every day across a lot of codebases — not just one repo. At work that is mostly a large Angular/Nx monorepo plus many smaller web projects. At home it is broader still: playground companion repos tied to omid.dev articles, browser demos on playground.omid.dev, Rust/WASM experiments, Linux tooling, and whatever the next post needs. Agent mode, multi-file refactors, and inline edits are genuinely faster than doing the same work by hand on any of them.\n","tags":["Cursor IDE","AI Tools","Ollama","Perplexity","Manjaro","Linux","Software Engineering","Angular"],"title":"How to Stretch Cursor Pro Further: A Split AI Workflow"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-25T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/25/after-the-zoom-out-a-playbook-for-staying-current/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"In The Zoom-Out, I wrote about the moment a senior developer realizes they don’t know what they don’t know — Corepack, Yarn, Orval, the whole peripheral toolchain that matured while we were busy shipping.\nThat post was about naming the feeling and regaining perspective. Plenty of readers wrote back with the natural next question:\n“Okay, I get it — the map is huge and I can’t know everything. But how do I actually find the important stuff before I’ve been doing it wrong for five years?”\n","tags":["Senior Developer","Ecosystem Blind Spot","Career","Software Engineering","Learning","Engineering Leadership","Mentoring"],"title":"After the Zoom-Out: A Playbook for Staying Current Without Burning Out"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-16T02:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/16/how-i-learned-my-linux-machine-has-been-compressing-memory-for-years/","readingTime":12,"section":"posts","summary":"I’ve been using Linux for more than 15 years.\nI’ve administered servers, tuned kernels, experimented with filesystems, and read countless articles about swap, virtual memory, caching, and performance. I started with Ubuntu 4.x, spent years on Arch-based distributions, and today most of my work happens on Manjaro and Kubuntu.\nSo I was surprised when I stumbled upon a feature that had apparently been helping my system for years without me realizing it: zswap.\n","tags":["Linux","Manjaro","Desktop Linux","Kernel","Performance","zswap","zram","Virtual Memory"],"title":"How I Learned My Linux Machine Has Been Compressing Memory for Years Without Me Knowing"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2026-06-14T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/14/teaching-with-bio-dynamics-15-minute-lab-sessions/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Use this guide when you want to run a short session with Bio-Dynamics — a browser-only 3D lab linked from the probiotic articles on omid.dev. Each path below takes about 5 minutes; all three presets together fill a 15-minute workshop.\nEducational model — not medical advice. Population counts, strain effects, and biome shifts are illustrative. Do not use this lab for diagnosis or treatment decisions.\nInteractive lab Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox Open the live lab before your session. No install required — works in a modern desktop or tablet browser. Open interactive lab Before you start Open the lab on a projector or share your screen. Leave the macro view (rotatable body) visible at first. Point out the dashboard on the right: integrity and inflammation meters, event log, stressor buttons, and catalog tabs (Strains, Prebiotics, and so on). Click a tissue hotspot on the body (or pick a region in the sidebar) to enter the micro view — zoomed tissue with moving microbes. Press Esc to return to the full body map. Tip: Hover catalog items before clicking — the action impact panel previews what will change.\n","tags":["Probiotics","Prebiotics","Postbiotics","Allergies","Health Education"],"title":"Teaching with Bio-Dynamics: 15-Minute Lab Sessions"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-13T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/13/i18n-a11y-and-shareable-lab-state-in-the-browser/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Shipping an educational lab to a global audience means more than translation strings. Bio-Dynamics adds RTL layout for Persian, keyboard region shortcuts, ARIA live announcements, touch gesture hints, and URL-encoded lab checkpoints so teachers can share a mid-simulation state without a backend.\nCompanion resource Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox Try ?lang=fa or copy a lab link after running a scenario — source for i18n and labState.ts is on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/labs/microbiome-sandbox Open live lab View source on GitHub Lightweight i18n without a framework Locales live in src/i18n/en.ts, de.ts, and fa.ts. A small t() helper resolves dot-path keys with parameter interpolation:\n","tags":["TypeScript","Frontend","Web Performance","Open Source"],"title":"i18n, a11y, and Shareable Lab State in the Browser"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-12T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/12/catalog-driven-dashboard-strains-stressors-and-action-impact/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The Bio-Dynamics dashboard exposes a lot of buttons: regional stressors, inoculations, environment sliders, and four catalog tabs for strains, prebiotics, postbiotics, and products. The trick is not rendering HTML — it is keeping the catalog honest as content grows.\nThis post explains the data-first layout and the action impact preview panel.\nCompanion resource Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox Hover strains and products in the live lab to see impact preview, or browse the catalog TypeScript files on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/labs/microbiome-sandbox Open live lab View source on GitHub Data catalogs, not hard-coded panels Almost every control maps to a typed catalog under src/data/:\n","tags":["TypeScript","Frontend","Open Source"],"title":"Catalog-Driven Dashboard: Strains, Stressors, and Action Impact"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-11T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/11/macro-micro-3d-one-scene-graph-seven-tissue-builders/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Most microbiome diagrams are flat. Bio-Dynamics tries the opposite: a single Three.js scene that starts as a rotatable body map, then animates into a tissue cross-section when you pick a region — with microbe meshes, SCFA particles, and fog density tied to live simulation state.\nThis post covers the visualization layer. Companion source and the full architecture write-up are in the repository.\nCompanion resource Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox Open the live lab, zoom into gut or nasal tissue, then inspect the Three.js scene code on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/labs/microbiome-sandbox Open live lab View source on GitHub One scene, two modes SceneManager owns a single WebGL scene with two interaction modes:\n","tags":["TypeScript","Frontend","Open Source"],"title":"Macro/Micro 3D: One Scene Graph, Seven Tissue Builders"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-10T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/10/deterministic-microbiome-simulation-without-overclaiming-science/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Bio-Dynamics is an educational 3D lab, not a clinical simulator. That constraint shaped every decision in the simulation layer: reproducible ticks, scalar tissue state, capped agent counts, and inflammation that emerges from pressure instead of jumping on every button press.\nThis post walks through the engine design.\nCompanion resource Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox Run the live lab or inspect the simulation source — tick engine, golden tests, and full docs in the repository. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/labs/microbiome-sandbox Open live lab View source on GitHub Why deterministic? Interactive demos fail the educational test when the same button sequence produces different outcomes on refresh. Readers cannot build intuition from noise.\n","tags":["TypeScript","Frontend","Open Source"],"title":"Designing a Deterministic Microbiome Simulation Without Overclaiming Science"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-09T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/09/building-bio-dynamics-educational-3d-microbiome-lab-in-the-browser/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"I write a lot about Angular platforms, monorepos, and production frontends. Bio-Dynamics is different: a browser-only educational lab where you rotate a 3D body map, zoom into tissue, and run deterministic probiotic scenarios tied to health articles on omid.dev.\nIt started for three reasons — a human one, a developer-story one, and a career one. This post is the anchor for that project. Deeper technical posts follow in a short series linked at the end.\n","tags":["Case Study","Frontend","TypeScript","Open Source","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Building Bio-Dynamics: An Educational 3D Microbiome Lab in the Browser"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-09T01:50:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/09/how-to-build-a-frontend-testing-strategy-that-actually-scales/","readingTime":11,"section":"posts","summary":"Most frontend teams do not have a testing problem because they lack tests. They have a testing problem because nobody can explain why a specific test exists.\nThe result is familiar:\nhundreds of unit tests that prove implementation details; a few end-to-end tests that fail whenever timing changes; component tests that duplicate what unit tests already cover; slow CI pipelines that people stop trusting; high coverage numbers with very little confidence. This is especially common in large Angular codebases. Angular gives teams a serious testing toolbox: TestBed, standalone components, dependency injection, router testing, HTTP testing utilities, harnesses, and good compatibility with tools like Jest, Vitest, Cypress, and Playwright. The tooling is not the hard part.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Testing","TypeScript","Software Architecture","Component Testing","E2E Testing","Maintainability"],"title":"How to Build a Frontend Testing Strategy That Actually Scales"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-08T02:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/08/why-your-frontend-tests-flake-and-how-to-fix-them-for-good/","readingTime":11,"section":"posts","summary":"Flaky tests are worse than failing tests.\nA failing test tells the team something broke. A flaky test teaches the team to negotiate with reality:\n“Run it again.” “CI is weird today.” “It passes locally.” “That test always fails on Mondays.” “Merge it, the failure is unrelated.” That is how a test suite loses authority. The first few flakes feel harmless. Then people stop reading failures carefully. Then a real regression hides inside the noise.\n","tags":["Frontend","Testing","E2E Testing","Test Automation","CI","Playwright","Cypress","Angular","Maintainability"],"title":"Why Your Frontend Tests Flake and How to Fix Them for Good"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-04T01:38:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/04/building-a-tiny-linux-app-to-explain-desktop-stutter/","readingTime":13,"section":"posts","summary":"I wanted an excuse to build a small real Linux app.\nNot a shell script. Not a giant desktop application. Not a kernel module. Just a focused program that talks to Linux through the interfaces the system already exposes, gives that data a shape, and presents it as something a normal desktop user can run.\nDesktop stutter turned out to be a good excuse.\nMy own machine is not slow: modern CPU, fast NVMe storage, plenty of RAM, KDE Plasma on Wayland, and a current kernel. Most of the time it feels excellent. Then, once in a while, the pointer hesitates, a window animation misses a beat, audio gets a tiny crackle, or the browser pauses while a package update or build is running.\n","tags":["Linux","Desktop Linux","Kernel","Rust","Performance","PSI","cgroups"],"title":"Building a Tiny Linux App to Explain Desktop Stutter"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-03T01:10:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/03/ubuntu-manjaro-and-the-linux-desktop-im-rethinking/","readingTime":12,"section":"posts","summary":"I have not switched back to Kubuntu yet.\nI am still daily-driving Manjaro KDE on my ASUS Vivobook Pro 15, with Plasma 6.6.5, Wayland, btrfs, and a hybrid Intel Arc + NVIDIA RTX 3050 setup. But I have been running Kubuntu 26.04 LTS in VirtualBox, comparing the two side by side, and asking a question I did not expect to ask again after several happy years on Arch-based rolling release:\n","tags":["Linux","Ubuntu","Kubuntu","Manjaro","KDE Plasma","NVIDIA","Desktop Linux","AUR","Package Management"],"title":"Ubuntu, Manjaro, and the Linux Desktop I Thought I'd Left Behind"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-02T01:15:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/02/stop-modeling-angular-screens-with-five-booleans/","readingTime":11,"section":"posts","summary":"Open almost any mature Angular screen and you will find the same shape:\n1 2 3 4 5 loading = false; error: string | null = null; data: Account[] | null = null; retrying = false; submitted = false; The template then becomes a negotiation:\n1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 @if (loading) { \u003capp-spinner /\u003e } @else if (error) { \u003capp-error [message]=\"error\" /\u003e } @else if (!data?.length) { \u003capp-empty-state /\u003e } @else { \u003caccount-table [rows]=\"data!\" /\u003e } This looks fine. It ships. It passes review. And then production teaches you that the screen was never modeled as one thing. It was modeled as five independent switches that sometimes agree and sometimes do not.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","TypeScript","Software Architecture","Signals","State Management","Maintainability"],"title":"Stop Modeling Angular Screens with Five Booleans"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-06-01T01:41:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/06/01/why-i-started-adding-full-source-code-to-my-blog-posts/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"One thing I have always found frustrating in technical writing is the gap between a nice explanation and code you can actually explore.\nA post can explain an idea clearly, but if the code is only a few isolated snippets, the reader still has to imagine the project around it. Where does this file live? What package versions were used? How do the pieces connect? Can I run it, or is it only illustrative?\n","tags":["Tech Blogging","Source Code","Web Development","Frontend","Open Source"],"title":"Why I Started Adding Full Source Code to My Blog Posts"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-05-29T16:45:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/05/29/how-to-install-cursor-ide-in-manjaro/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Cursor is distributed for Linux as an AppImage, which works well on Manjaro because you do not need to wait for a package in the official repositories or the AUR.\nBefore writing this post, I tried installing Cursor from the AUR, but it was not stable enough for me. I also did not love the extra Electron dependency, although that was not the main reason I moved away from that method. At the time of writing, there is no official Snap release, no official Manjaro or Arch package for Cursor either.\n","tags":["Manjaro","Arch Linux","Cursor IDE","Linux","AppImage"],"title":"How to Install Cursor IDE on Manjaro Linux"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-05-27T02:48:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/05/27/angular-mcp-ai-workflows-real-teams/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular has always had a complicated relationship with tooling. People call it “heavy” when they want something lighter, but that same weight is often what helps large teams keep moving without reinventing the architecture every sprint.\nThat is why Angular’s MCP server work in the Angular 21 cycle is more interesting than another code-generation headline. This is not just “AI can write Angular now.” AI could already write Angular, often badly. The real question is whether Angular can give AI tools enough project-aware context to stop generating outdated, half-remembered patterns.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Data \u0026 AI","Software Architecture","MCP","AI Tools"],"title":"Angular Is Quietly Becoming AI-Tool Friendly: What MCP Server Support Changes for Real Teams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-05-26T02:48:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/05/26/angular-template-syntax-hidden-cost/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Every framework eventually discovers the same truth: developers love nice syntax until nice syntax becomes a hiding place.\nAngular’s recent template improvements are genuinely useful. Multiple consecutive @case blocks make some @switch statements cleaner. Spread and rest support in templates removes awkward helper code in small cases. Angular 21.2’s template additions, such as arrow functions and exhaustive @switch checks with @default never, continue the same direction: templates are becoming more expressive and more type-aware.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","TypeScript","Software Architecture","Code Review","Maintainability","Templates"],"title":"The Hidden Cost of Nice Syntax: When Angular's New Template Features Make Code Harder to Reason About"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-05-25T02:48:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/05/25/signal-forms-model-ui-state/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Most forms discussions start in the wrong place. They compare syntax.\nReactive Forms gives us FormGroup, FormControl, validators, status flags, and a lot of well-known muscle memory. Signal Forms gives us fields, signal-shaped state, form-level submission, custom controls, and migration tools. It is tempting to treat this as a cleaner API for the same old job.\nBut that misses the bigger shift.\nSignal Forms are not only about filling inputs and showing validation messages. They push forms into the same mental model as the rest of modern Angular state: explicit signals, derived values, and state transitions that can be composed instead of chased through subscriptions.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","TypeScript","Software Architecture","Signals","Signal Forms"],"title":"Signal Forms Aren't Just a Forms API Update: They Change How You Model UI State"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-02-25T22:22:05+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/02/25/the-zoom-out-when-15-years-of-code-meets-the-ecosystem-blind-spot/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"It happened to me this morning. After 15 years in the trenches—building frontend architectures, dipping into the backend, leading teams, and surviving countless framework wars—I hit a wall. Not a technical wall, but a conceptual one.\nI realized I didn’t know what Corepack was. I’ve never actually used Yarn. I’ve heard of test‑managers and code‑generation tools like Orval, but I’ve never managed to actually run one in a production pipeline.\n","tags":["Senior Developer","Ecosystem Blind Spot","Tooling","Career","Software Development","Perspective"],"title":"The Zoom-Out: When 15 Years of Code Meets the \"Ecosystem Blind Spot\""},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2026-01-07T01:30:14+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/01/07/hidden-depletion-medication-side-effects/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"We often assume that if a doctor prescribes a medication, the only thing we need to worry about is the primary condition it treats. For over two decades, I lived by this assumption. Diagnostic: High Blood Pressure. Prescription: Atenolol 100 and Triamterene-H. Later, Levothyroxine for my thyroid, and eventually Allopurinol and Atorvastatin. I was “managed.”\nBut management isn’t always the same as health.\nAbout ten years into my journey with hypertension, I faced a new challenge: high blood glucose. It was a shock. The doctor prescribed Metformin and Gliclazide. For a while, things were under control, especially after I managed to lose a few kilograms and cut sugary foods from my diet. But then, despite my efforts, my numbers spiked again; my A1C hit a staggering 14.2.\n","tags":["Health","Diabetes","Hypertension","Nutrient Depletion","Supplements","Personal Story"],"title":"The Hidden Depletion: My Journey from 14.2 A1c to Metabolic Recovery"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-01-03T01:05:58+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/01/03/technical-founder-execution-playbook/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":"You have a startup idea, and you have the skills to build it. As a senior developer, you’ve likely spent years mastering the art of turning requirements into robust, scalable systems. But when you decide to build your own company, you realize that the code is the easy part. The hard part is everything around the code: validation, prioritization, distribution, operations, and leadership.\nThis post is a deep dive into the “Execution Gap.” It’s designed for the developer who can build anything but doesn’t know how to make it a reality in the market. We’re going to move past the clichés and look at the gritty details of startup execution, including the legal and management hurdles that often trip up technical founders.\n","tags":["Startup","Technical Founder","Entrepreneurship","Software Architecture","MVP","Validation","Product Management","Team Building","Legal","Career"],"title":"The Engineer’s Dilemma: Building a Startup When You Only Want to Code"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2026-01-01T02:25:59+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/01/01/ship-of-theseus-react-to-angular/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In the software world, the “Ship of Theseus” paradox is a daily reality. We replace parts of a system until, eventually, none of the original code remains. But usually, the industry moves toward the “shiny new thing.”\nAt work, we did something that might sound like heresy to some: we migrated our core legacy React applications to Angular.\nThis wasn’t a decision made out of fanboyism. It was a strategic move driven by the need for governance, stability, and long-term maintainability in a high-stakes FinTech environment. I’ll explain the architectural “why” and the pragmatic “how” of moving against the grain.\n","tags":["Angular","React","Migration","Frontend Architecture","FinTech","Case Study"],"title":"Migrating from React to Angular: A 'Ship of Theseus' Case Study in Production"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2026-01-01T02:22:25+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/01/01/circadian-rhythm-and-code-quality/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"As developers, we often treat our bodies like hardware that just needs caffeine to keep running. We pull late-night sessions, work in dimly lit rooms, and stare at blue-light-emitting screens for 12 hours a day. We optimize our CI/CD pipelines, our database queries, and our bundle sizes, but we often ignore the most critical piece of infrastructure in our stack: our own biology.\nOur brains aren’t just processors; they are biological organs governed by a 24-hour internal clock known as the circadian rhythm. This rhythm dictates everything from our core body temperature to our hormone production and, most importantly for us, our cognitive performance.\n","tags":["Health","Productivity","Circadian Rhythm","Developer Wellness","Biology"],"title":"The Circadian Code: Why Your Code Quality Depends on Your Light Exposure"},{"categories":["Electronics"],"date":"2026-01-01T02:20:42+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2026/01/01/troubleshooting-intermittent-faults-electronics/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"There is nothing more frustrating than a device that works perfectly until you try to show someone else. In the world of vintage electronics, these “intermittent faults” are the ultimate test of an engineer’s patience and methodology.\nUnlike a blown fuse or a charred resistor, an intermittent fault is a ghost. It might be a cold solder joint that only fails when the chassis expands from heat, or a silver-mica capacitor that only leaks under specific humidity levels. These are the problems that don’t show up on a static multimeter test. They require a dynamic, almost adversarial approach to troubleshooting.\n","tags":["Electronics","Troubleshooting","Vintage Tech","Engineering Mentality"],"title":"The Ghost in the Machine: Troubleshooting Intermittent Faults in Vintage Circuits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-28T02:24:05+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/28/personal-knowledge-engine-jupyter-llm/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"We’ve all used ChatGPT to write a function or debug a regex. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real power of Large Language Models (LLMs) isn’t in the “chat”; it’s in the integration.\nAs I explored in my 2025 series on Jupyter and AI, the real value of these tools comes when they are part of a structured thinking process. By combining the interactive execution of Jupyter Notebooks with the reasoning power of Local LLMs, we can build something much more powerful: a Personal Knowledge Engine.\n","tags":["AI","Jupyter","LLM","Productivity","Knowledge Management","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Building a Personal Knowledge Engine with Jupyter and Local LLMs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-27T02:23:11+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/27/ethics-of-legacy-code/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Every developer has been there: you inherit a codebase that looks like a bowl of spaghetti, and your first instinct is to say, “We need to rewrite this.” You see the outdated libraries, the inconsistent naming conventions, and the lack of unit tests, and you think, “I could do this so much better from scratch.”\nBut a rewrite is rarely just a technical decision. It’s a social and ethical one. Legacy code is code that is working. It’s code that is paying the bills, processing the transactions, and serving the users. When we dismiss it as “trash,” we are dismissing the context, the constraints, and the hard work of the engineers who came before us.\n","tags":["Legacy Systems","Engineering Leadership","Technical Debt","Software Ethics","Software Architecture"],"title":"The Ethics of Legacy Code: Why Rewriting is Often a Mistake"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-26T02:22:19+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/26/debugging-radio-vs-microservices/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"When you open up a 1970s radio, you aren’t met with logs or stack traces. You’re met with voltages, currents, and signals. If the audio is distorted, you don’t “grep” for an error; you trace the signal path from the antenna to the speaker.\nModern microservices aren’t that different, though we often forget it. We’ve traded copper wires for HTTP requests and vacuum tubes for Docker containers, but the fundamental challenge of observability remains the same: how do you understand what’s happening inside a complex, distributed system without tearing it apart?\n","tags":["Debugging","Electronics","Microservices","Observability","Engineering Mentality","Software Architecture"],"title":"Microservices Observability: Lessons from Debugging 1970s Radios"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-25T02:21:24+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/25/cost-of-consistency-design-systems/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Design systems are promised as the ultimate productivity booster. “Build once, use everywhere.” And for the first six months, it’s true. You see the velocity of your feature teams skyrocket as they stop arguing about hex codes and start assembling pages from a library of pre-built components.\nBut as your team grows and your product evolves, the very system that was supposed to speed you up can start to slow you down. At work, we built a comprehensive Angular-based design system that initially reduced delivery time by 40%. However, as we scaled, we hit the “maintenance phase”: the point where the cost of consistency began to rival the cost of development itself.\n","tags":["Design Systems","Engineering Leadership","Scalability","UI/UX"],"title":"The Cost of Consistency: Avoiding Design System Bottlenecks"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-24T02:20:31+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/24/angular-signals-control-theory/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular Signals have changed the way we think about reactivity in the frontend. But if you step outside the world of JavaScript, the concept of a “Signal” has a much older, much deeper history in Control Theory and Electrical Engineering.\nWhen we talk about “glitch-free” execution in Angular, we are actually talking about maintaining the integrity of a signal graph. I’ll explore the connection between the physics of signals and the architecture of modern web applications.\n","tags":["Angular","Signals","Control Theory","Reactivity","Performance"],"title":"Angular Signals and Control Theory: A New Reactivity Model"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-23T02:26:48+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/23/jupyter-real-world-examples/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Companion resource Companion Project Explore the complete working example on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/jupyter-blog-starter View on GitHub In the previous parts, we discussed why Jupyter is a “thinking environment.” In this final part, we’ll walk through four concrete scenarios where a notebook outperforms a traditional IDE for a senior engineer.\n1. API Archaeology: Mapping the Unknown When you’re dealing with a complex API, you don’t want to build a full client just to see what the data looks like.\n","tags":["Jupyter","Python","Data Analysis","API","DevOps","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Jupyter, ChatGPT, Copilot (Part 3): Real-World Code Examples"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-23T02:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/23/jupyter-technical-setup-guide/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Companion resource Companion Project Explore the complete working example on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/jupyter-blog-starter View on GitHub The Modern Jupyter Stack For a software engineer, the “standard” way of installing Jupyter (global pip install) is often the wrong way. It leads to dependency hell and “it works on my machine” syndrome.\nHere is a professional setup guide.\n1. Installation \u0026 Environment Management The “UV” Way (Recommended) If you haven’t tried uv yet, it’s a lightning-fast Python package manager. It makes managing Jupyter environments trivial.\n","tags":["Jupyter","Python","DevOps","Setup","VS Code","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Jupyter, ChatGPT, Copilot (Part 2): The Technical Guide to Jupyter Setup"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2025-12-23T01:09:51+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/23/jupyter-the-strategic-value-of-thinking-in-notebooks/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"If you come from a traditional software engineering background (frontend, backend, systems), chances are you’ve seen Project Jupyter everywhere, from notebooks and extensions to cloud platforms, and thought:\n“This looks huge… but I don’t really see where I fit in.”\nI had the same confusion. Let’s look at it clearly, using roles, not buzzwords.\nFirst: What Jupyter Is Not Jupyter is not:\nA programming language (unlike R or Python) A replacement for IDEs like VS Code A production development environment A competitor to ChatGPT or Copilot If you try to use it as any of those, it will feel awkward.\n","tags":["Jupyter","ChatGPT","Copilot","Engineering Culture","Decision Making","Data Science","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Jupyter, ChatGPT, Copilot (Part 1): The Strategic Value of Thinking in Notebooks"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2025-12-18T00:20:26+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2025/12/18/conditioned-taste-aversion/","readingTime":22,"section":"posts","summary":"Conditioned taste aversion, sometimes called the Garcia effect in honor of John Garcia who first described its unusual properties, is a powerful and fascinating form of learning. It is not only an interesting phenomenon in behavioral science, it also matters a great deal in medicine, nutrition, oncology, pediatrics, and everyday life. This long-form post explains what conditioned taste aversion is, how and why it happens, how to recognize it, the problems it can cause, ways to prevent and manage it, how it differs from allergies and other food-related issues, and where to look for more detailed scientific and clinical information.\n","tags":["Conditioned Taste Aversion","Food Aversion and Eating Behavior","Nutrition and Appetite Disorders","Learning and Behavioral Psychology","Food Allergy vs Intolerance"],"title":"Conditioned Taste Aversion"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2024-11-06T22:27:47+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/11/06/can-houseplants-compete-with-your-humidifier-a-fun-comparison/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"When it comes to increasing indoor humidity, most people think of a humidifier. But what if a couple of houseplants, like the Spathiphyllum (peace lily) or the Ficus elastica (rubber plant), could compete? Let’s dive into a fun comparison to see how these popular houseplants stack up against a common cool mist humidifier! 🌿💧\nThe Competitors Cool Mist Humidifier\nOur modern champion in the battle for indoor humidity! It’s efficient and effective for boosting indoor air moisture quickly.\n","tags":["Random Comparison","Houseplants","Health","Home Environment","Science Is Fun","Statics"],"title":"Can Houseplants Compete with Your Humidifier? A Fun Comparison!"},{"categories":["Electronics"],"date":"2024-10-14T16:34:21+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/10/14/how-to-debug-an-electronic-device-that-wont-power-up-a-step-by-step-guide-for-board-level-repair/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"When an electronic device refuses to power up, it can be frustrating for anyone, but for someone with a bit of electronics knowledge, it becomes a challenge to solve. The issue could be as simple as a faulty capacitor or as complex as a damaged integrated circuit (IC). This guide provides an in-depth, step-by-step approach for debugging a device at the board level. We’ll walk you through checking key components such as capacitors, transistors, diodes, and integrated circuits (ICs), explaining what each does, how to test them, and how to interpret the results. By the end, you should have a clear process for diagnosing and potentially fixing a dead device.\n","tags":["Electronics Repair","Circuit Board Debugging","Component Testing","Troubleshooting","PCB Repair","Power Supply Issues","DIY Electronics Fixes"],"title":"How to Debug an Electronic Device That Won't Power Up: A Step-by-Step Guide for Board-Level Repair"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2024-09-10T03:36:54+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/09/10/probiotics-through-the-ages/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Probiotics, live beneficial bacteria and yeasts, offer significant health benefits across various stages of life. From infancy to old age, probiotics can support digestive health, boost the immune system, promote mental well-being, and even help with skin health. But how does their role evolve as we age, and which probiotics should be taken at different life stages?\nInteractive lab Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox See how early-life microbiome training shapes barrier defense—explore life-stage context on the nasal tissue sandbox with region-specific inoculations. Open interactive lab Running a session? 15-minute educator guide (life-stage) →\n","tags":["Prebiotics","Probiotics","Postbiotics"],"title":"Probiotics Through the Ages: How Probiotics Benefit Health at Every Life Stage"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2024-09-10T03:09:17+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/09/10/how-probiotics-help-with-candidiasis/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Candidiasis is an infection caused by an overgrowth of Candida, a type of yeast that naturally exists in the body. When Candida grows uncontrollably, it can lead to various health issues, including oral thrush, vaginal yeast infections, and systemic infections. Probiotics, beneficial bacteria that support gut health, can play a crucial role in managing and preventing Candidiasis. This post explores how probiotics help with Candidiasis, their mechanisms of action, and specific strains that offer the most benefit.\n","tags":["Prebiotics","Probiotics","Postbiotics","Candidiasis","Womens health"],"title":"How Probiotics Help with Candidiasis"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2024-09-10T02:57:14+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/09/10/how-probiotics-help-with-allergies/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Allergies occur when the immune system overreacts to a typically harmless substance, such as pollen, dust, or certain foods. Probiotics, especially certain strains, can help regulate immune responses and alleviate allergic symptoms by influencing the balance of gut bacteria and modulating inflammation.\nInteractive lab Bio-Dynamics: Microbiome Sandbox Explore the allergy scenario on a 3D body map—stress nasal barriers with allergens, then run probiotic inoculations to watch commensal competition and barrier recovery. Open interactive lab Running a session? 15-minute educator guide (allergy) →\n","tags":["Prebiotics","Probiotics","Postbiotics","Allergies"],"title":"How Probiotics Help with Allergies"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2024-09-10T02:33:09+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/09/10/prebiotics-probiotics-postbiotics/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"In recent years, the terms prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics have gained widespread attention in discussions about health and well-being. These compounds, derived from food and supplements, play a significant role in maintaining gut health and extend benefits to multiple bodily systems. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore what each one is, their categories, the range of health benefits they offer, sources for each, and how they help with common health issues such as allergies, candidiasis, and lactose intolerance.\n","tags":["Prebiotics","Probiotics","Postbiotics"],"title":"Unlocking the World of Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Postbiotics: The Complete Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-09-08T12:56:55+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/09/08/unlocking-the-power-of-angulars-viewchild-and-contentchild/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular’s @ViewChild and @ContentChild decorators provide a powerful way to interact with child components, DOM elements, and projected content within a component’s template. While they are often misunderstood or used interchangeably, each has its own specific purpose and use cases.\nIn this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive deep into both decorators, understanding their differences, use cases, and best practices. Additionally, we’ll explore advanced techniques for leveraging them in various scenarios and edge cases, complete with sample code for hands-on understanding.\n","tags":["Angular","ViewChild","ContentChild","DOM Manipulation","Component Interaction","Angular Best Practices","Frontend"],"title":"ViewChild Angular: Complete Guide to @ViewChild and @ContentChild"},{"categories":["Electronics"],"date":"2024-09-05T00:35:29+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/09/05/reviving-vintage-electronics/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"There’s a unique charm to vintage electronics that modern devices often lack. Whether it’s the satisfying click of a mechanical switch, the warm glow of an analog display, or the nostalgic hum of an old radio, these classic gadgets evoke memories of a bygone era. However, as much as we cherish these old devices, time has not been kind to them. Components degrade, parts become obsolete, and many of these gadgets find themselves collecting dust in attics and basements. But what if we could breathe new life into these vintage treasures? By combining old-school expertise with modern technology, we can restore and even enhance these classic devices, preserving their legacy for future generations.\n","tags":["Vintage Electronics","Electronics Restoration","DIY Tech","Retro Gadgets","Modern Technology","IoT Integration"],"title":"Reviving Vintage Electronics: A Journey Through Restoring Classic Gadgets with Modern Technology"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-08-13T16:42:19+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/08/13/the-hidden-world-of-esoteric-programming-languages/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"Programming languages are the backbone of the digital world, enabling us to create software that powers everything from our smartphones to space exploration. While most developers are familiar with popular languages like Python, JavaScript, and C++, there’s a fascinating and lesser-known realm of programming languages that exist outside the mainstream. These are known as esoteric programming languages, or “esolangs” for short.\nEsoteric programming languages are not designed for practical use or efficiency. Instead, they are created as a form of artistic expression, puzzles, or to explore unusual concepts in computer science. Some esolangs challenge the very idea of what a programming language can be, while others are designed to be intentionally difficult to use. In this post, we’ll delve into the hidden world of esoteric programming languages, exploring their history, purpose, and some of the most intriguing examples.\n","tags":["Esoteric Programming Languages","Brainfuck","Whitespace","LOLCODE","Malbolge","Piet","Befunge","INTERCAL"],"title":"The Hidden World of Esoteric Programming Languages"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-08-07T02:20:56+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/08/07/migrating-from-rest-to-graphql-a-step-by-step-guide-for-expressjs-and-angular/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s rapidly evolving web development landscape, GraphQL has emerged as a powerful alternative to traditional REST APIs. This blog post will guide you through the process of migrating your Express.js backend and Angular frontend from REST to GraphQL, unlocking the benefits of a more flexible and efficient API architecture.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Explore the complete working example on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/graphql-express-angular-migration View on GitHub 1. Introduction REST (Representational State Transfer) has been the go-to architectural style for building web APIs for many years. However, GraphQL, developed by Facebook, offers several advantages:\n","tags":["GraphQL","API Migration","ExpressJs","Angular","Apollo Server","Web Development","Frontend","Case Study"],"title":"Migrating from REST to GraphQL: A Step-by-Step Guide for Express.js and Angular"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-24T17:36:35+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/24/code-archaeology-exploring-and-modernizing-legacy-systems/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"In the fast-paced world of software development, we often find ourselves standing on the shoulders of giants – or more accurately, on top of layers upon layers of legacy code. These aging systems, some decades old, continue to power critical infrastructure in industries ranging from finance to healthcare. While they may lack the glamour of cutting-edge technologies, these legacy systems are the bedrock of many organizations, silently processing millions of transactions every day.\n","tags":["Legacy Systems","Code Archaeology","Software Modernization","Technical Debt","Refactoring Code","Software Engineering","System Migration","Software Architecture"],"title":"Code Archaeology: Exploring and modernizing legacy systems"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-14T16:56:35+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/14/mentorship-in-tech-how-to-be-an-effective-mentor-and-mentee/","readingTime":13,"section":"posts","summary":"Mentorship is a cornerstone of professional growth and development, particularly in the fast-paced and ever-evolving tech industry. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your career, engaging in a mentor-mentee relationship can provide invaluable insights, support, and opportunities for both personal and professional advancement. This blog post explores the benefits of mentorship in tech and offers practical guidelines for both mentors and mentees to maximize their relationships.\nThe Importance of Mentorship in Tech Accelerated Learning and Skill Development One of the most significant benefits of mentorship is the accelerated learning curve it provides. Mentors can share their knowledge, experience, and insights, helping mentees navigate complex technical concepts and industry trends more quickly than they might on their own. This hands-on guidance can be particularly valuable in the tech industry, where new technologies and methodologies emerge rapidly.\n","tags":["Tech Mentorship","Career Development","Professional Growth","Mentoring In Tech","Tech Industry","Mentee Tips","Mentor Guidelines","Career","Engineering Leadership"],"title":"Mentorship in Tech: How to Be an Effective Mentor and Mentee"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-13T17:43:38+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/13/creating-dynamic-music-visualizations-with-angular-and-the-web-audio-api/","readingTime":11,"section":"posts","summary":"Music visualization has always been a fascinating way to enhance the auditory experience, offering a visual representation of sound that can be both mesmerizing and informative. With the power of modern web technologies like Angular and the Web Audio API, creating dynamic music visualizations is more accessible than ever. This blog post will guide you through the process of building an engaging music visualization application using Angular and the Web Audio API.\n","tags":["Angular","WebAudio API","Music Visualization","Frontend","JavaScript","Web Development","HTML5 Canvas"],"title":"Creating Dynamic Music Visualizations with Angular and the Web Audio API"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-10T02:53:39+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/10/navigating-career-dissatisfaction-a-guide-for-tech-professionals/","readingTime":13,"section":"posts","summary":"Career dissatisfaction among developers is a common issue that can arise from various factors, including stagnation, lack of recognition, or misalignment with personal goals. Understanding the root causes and taking proactive steps to address them can help navigate these challenges effectively. This comprehensive guide will explore what developers should do for personal development, what they should expect from their employers, and how to foster a satisfying career.\nIdentifying the Problem Signs of career dissatisfaction can include a lack of motivation, decreased productivity, and a sense of disengagement from work. If you find yourself questioning your career choices, it’s essential to reflect on your feelings and identify whether your dissatisfaction stems from personal issues, workplace environment, or a combination of both. Differentiating between these factors can help you take the appropriate steps toward resolution.\n","tags":["Career Development","Tech Industry","Job Satisfaction","Professional Growth","Work-Life Balance","Personal Improvement","Employee Well-Being","Career"],"title":"Navigating Career Dissatisfaction: A Guide for Tech Professionals"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-08T00:32:41+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/08/from-concept-to-reality-launching-a-tech-startup-in-2024/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Launching a tech startup is an exhilarating journey, filled with moments of inspiration, innovation, and challenge. In 2024, the landscape of entrepreneurship is as dynamic and promising as ever, offering vast opportunities for those willing to dive in and create something remarkable. This comprehensive guide aims to provide aspiring tech entrepreneurs with a roadmap from ideation to scaling their startup. We’ll cover essential steps such as ideation, market research, MVP development, securing funding, and scaling your business.\n","tags":["Startup","Tech Startup","Entrepreneurship","Startup Journey","MVP Development","Funding And Scaling","Career"],"title":"From Concept to Reality: Launching a Tech Startup in 2024"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-07T10:00:00+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/07/chaos-engineering-backend-and-infrastructure/","readingTime":15,"section":"posts","summary":"Backend chaos engineering assumes you control the runtime — VMs, containers, networks, managed databases — which makes fault injection precise. You choose exactly which pod, zone, or dependency to disrupt. This guide covers steady state for microservices, failure domains from compute to messaging, resilience patterns to validate, Chaos Mesh and Toxiproxy walkthroughs, SLO measurement, CI automation, game-day execution, and tooling.\nIf you are new to the discipline, start with Chaos Engineering: Principles and Practice for the experiment loop, blast-radius controls, and game-day concepts. For how the same mindset applies in the browser, see Chaos Engineering for Frontend Applications.\n","tags":["Chaos Engineering","System Resilience","Failure Testing","DevOps","Site Reliability Engineering","Software Robustness","Reliability Testing","Software Architecture"],"title":"Chaos Engineering for Backend and Infrastructure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-04T01:50:50+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/04/breaking-free-from-framework-constraints/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"As a frontend team leader, one of your most crucial responsibilities is ensuring your team remains adaptable and forward-thinking in an ever-evolving technological landscape. While standardizing on a single framework can provide short-term efficiency, it risks limiting your team’s growth and flexibility in the long run. Let’s explore strategies to avoid this pitfall, complete with real-world examples.\nFocus on Core Principles At the heart of frontend development lie the fundamental web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These form the bedrock upon which all frameworks are built. By emphasizing mastery of these core technologies, you equip your team with transferable skills that transcend any single framework.\n","tags":["Frontend","Team Leadership","Frameworks","Micro Frontends","Engineering Leadership"],"title":"Avoiding Framework Lock-in: A Frontend Team Leader's Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-07-01T00:42:10+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/07/01/chaos-engineering-in-frontend-development/","readingTime":16,"section":"posts","summary":"Frontend code runs on hardware and networks you never see. A user in rural Indonesia on a three-year-old Android phone over a flaky 3G connection experiences your application differently from a developer on fiber in Berlin. That gap is exactly where client-side chaos engineering pays off.\nThis guide covers browser-side failure domains, resilience patterns, MSW and Cypress walkthroughs, real-time and auth chaos, SSR/hydration faults, performance pressure, offline sync, and tooling. For the shared experiment loop, blast-radius controls, and game-day concepts, start with Chaos Engineering: Principles and Practice. For fault injection on pods, networks, and datastores, see Chaos Engineering for Backend and Infrastructure.\n","tags":["Chaos Engineering","System Resilience","Frontend"],"title":"Chaos Engineering for Frontend Applications"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-28T12:31:41+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/28/building-a-distributed-tracing-system-with-opentelemetry-in-angular-applications/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s complex microservices architectures, understanding the flow of requests and pinpointing performance bottlenecks can be challenging. This is where distributed tracing comes into play, and OpenTelemetry provides a powerful toolkit for implementing it. In this post, we’ll explore how to build a distributed tracing system for Angular applications using OpenTelemetry, with a focus on microservices architecture and performance monitoring.\nWhat is a Distributed Tracing System? A distributed tracing system is a method of tracking and analyzing requests as they flow through various services in a distributed system. It provides a holistic view of how a request propagates through different components, helping developers identify bottlenecks, troubleshoot issues, and optimize performance.\n","tags":["OpenTelemetry","Distributed Tracing System","Angular","Frontend","Case Study"],"title":"OpenTelemetry in Angular: Distributed Tracing Setup Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-27T22:32:40+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/27/bridging-the-gap-between-technical-and-non-technical-teams/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"In the modern workplace, developers often find themselves at the intersection of technology and business. While the technical prowess required to build and maintain software systems is crucial, the ability to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders is equally important. This blog post aims to provide developers with tips and strategies to bridge the communication gap between technical and non-technical teams, ensuring smoother collaborations and more successful projects.\nUnderstanding the Importance of Effective Communication Effective communication is the backbone of any successful project. When developers can clearly convey their ideas, challenges, and progress to non-technical stakeholders, it fosters a collaborative environment where everyone is aligned towards common goals. Here are some key reasons why effective communication is vital:\n","tags":["Soft Skills","Communication","Non-Technical Teams","Management","Career Development","Engineering Leadership","Career"],"title":"Effective Communication for Developers: Bridging the Gap Between Technical and Non-Technical Teams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-26T05:01:11+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/26/implementing-custom-web-components-in-angular-with-stenciljs/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In modern web development, the ability to create reusable components that work across different frameworks and libraries is crucial. This is where Web Components come into play. Web Components allow developers to create custom, reusable HTML elements with encapsulated functionality and styling. However, building Web Components from scratch can be complex and time-consuming. Enter Stencil.js, a powerful tool that simplifies the creation of Web Components.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Try the working example in your browser or inspect the full source code behind this article. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/angular-stencil-web-components Open live demo View on GitHub In this guide, we’ll explore how to create custom Web Components using Stencil.js and seamlessly integrate them into Angular applications. Whether you’re an experienced developer or just getting started, this comprehensive guide will walk you through each step of the process.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Web Components","StencilJs"],"title":"Implementing Custom Web Components in Angular with Stencil.js"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-25T01:59:23+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/25/building-a-decentralized-application-dapp-with-angular-and-ethereum/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In recent years, decentralized applications (DApps) have emerged as a groundbreaking paradigm in the world of software development. Unlike traditional applications that run on centralized servers, DApps operate on blockchain technology, which offers enhanced security, transparency, and decentralization. This guide will walk you through the process of creating a DApp using Angular and Ethereum, including smart contract development with Solidity.\nWhat is a Decentralized Application (DApp)? A DApp is an application that runs on a decentralized network, typically a blockchain. Unlike conventional applications, DApps leverage the decentralized nature of blockchain to provide a higher level of security and trust. Key features of DApps include:\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Ethereum","DApp","Decentralized Application","Web3","Solidity","Truffle"],"title":"Building a Decentralized Application (DApp) with Angular and Ethereum"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-24T02:03:44+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/24/realtime-collaborative-editor-with-angular-firebase-webrtc/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Creating a real-time collaborative text editor can be a challenging but rewarding project. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of building a real-time collaborative editor using Angular, Firebase, and WebRTC. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a working understanding of these technologies and how to integrate them to create a seamless, real-time collaborative experience.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Explore the complete working example on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/angular-collaborative-editor-firebase-webrtc View on GitHub Introduction Real-time collaborative applications are increasingly popular in today’s digital world. They allow multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously, seeing each other’s changes in real time. Google Docs is a prime example of such an application. In this tutorial, we will build a similar application using modern web technologies.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Firebase","WebRTC","Real-Time App","Case Study"],"title":"Building a Real-Time Collaborative Editor with Angular, Firebase, and WebRTC: A Step-by-Step Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-23T01:52:51+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/23/optimizing-angular-applications-with-web-workers-and-offscreencanvas/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s web development landscape, performance is king. Users expect fast, responsive applications that perform smoothly even under heavy loads. This expectation places a significant burden on developers, especially those working with complex front-end frameworks like Angular. One effective strategy for enhancing the performance of Angular applications is to leverage Web Workers and OffscreenCanvas. In this detailed guide, we will explore how to use these technologies to offload heavy computations and rendering tasks, thus optimizing your Angular applications for better performance.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Web Workers","OffscreenCanvas","Optimizing","Performance"],"title":"Optimizing Angular Applications with Web Workers and OffscreenCanvas"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-22T02:38:09+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/22/yet-another-frontend-framework-the-rise-of-svelte/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"As we advance into 2024, the landscape of frontend development continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Developers are always on the lookout for frameworks that offer more efficiency, better performance, and ease of use. Among the numerous frameworks making waves this year, a few stand out due to their unique offerings and growing adoption:\nReact: A robust and flexible library maintained by Facebook, still reigning as the most popular framework for building user interfaces. Vue.js: Known for its simplicity and ease of integration, Vue.js is a favorite for many developers who need to quickly spin up a project. Angular: A powerful framework backed by Google, Angular is widely used for building large-scale enterprise applications. Svelte: A newer but rapidly growing framework that offers a unique approach to building web applications with a focus on performance and simplicity. While React, Vue, and Angular have been the go-to choices for many developers over the past few years, Svelte is increasingly capturing the attention of the development community. Let’s dive deeper into what makes Svelte stand out and why it’s becoming a preferred choice for many.\n","tags":["Svelte","Frontend","Rust","TypeScript"],"title":"Yet Another Frontend Framework? The Rise Of Svelte"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-21T21:30:37+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/21/advanced-networking-in-linux-vlans-bonding-and-bridging/","readingTime":11,"section":"posts","summary":"Linux networking becomes much easier to reason about when you treat interfaces as layers. A physical NIC can become part of a bond. A VLAN interface can sit on top of that bond. A bridge can sit on top of the VLAN. The host’s IP address belongs on whichever layer represents the host on that network.\nThis post focuses on three building blocks that often appear together on servers, virtualization hosts, routers, and lab machines:\n","tags":["Networking","Linux","VLANs","Bonding","Bridging","CentOS","RHEL","Debian","Ubuntu","NetworkManager","Netplan","Virtualization"],"title":"Advanced Networking in Linux: VLANs, Bonding, and Bridging"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-20T03:25:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/20/choosing-the-right-tech-stack-for-your-project-a-comprehensive-guide/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"In the rapidly evolving world of software development, choosing the right technology stack for your project is a critical decision. The technology stack, or tech stack, refers to the combination of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, tools, and software used to build and run your application. The right stack can streamline development, improve performance, and ensure scalability, while the wrong choice can lead to technical debt, inefficiencies, and even project failure.\n","tags":["Tech Stack","Software Development","Web Development","Mobile Development","Frontend Backend","Scalability","Programming Languages","Software Architecture"],"title":"Choosing the Right Tech Stack for Your Project: A Comprehensive Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-19T01:34:32+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/19/advanced-shell-scripting-techniques-automating-complex-tasks-with-bash/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Bash scripting, a cornerstone of Unix and Linux system administration, offers powerful tools to automate repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and handle complex operations. For those already comfortable with basic scripting, diving into advanced techniques can unlock new levels of efficiency and capability. This post will explore advanced shell scripting techniques in Bash, focusing on script optimization, robust error handling, and automating complex system administration tasks.\nScript Optimization Optimization is crucial for ensuring that your scripts run efficiently, especially when dealing with large datasets or intensive tasks. Here are some key techniques to optimize your Bash scripts.\n","tags":["Bash","Linux","CLI","Automating","Scripting"],"title":"Advanced Shell Scripting Techniques: Automating Complex Tasks with Bash"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-19T01:14:27+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/19/advanced-angular-change-detection-strategies-for-high-performance-applications/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"When it comes to building high-performance applications with Angular, understanding and optimizing change detection is crucial. This blog post will delve into advanced change detection strategies that can help you optimize the performance of your Angular applications. We will cover the OnPush change detection strategy, the importance of immutability, and techniques for manual change detection.\nIntroduction to Angular Change Detection Change detection is a mechanism that Angular uses to keep the view in sync with the underlying model. Whenever a component’s state changes, Angular detects this change and updates the DOM accordingly. This process, while automated and convenient, can become a performance bottleneck if not managed properly, especially in large and complex applications.\n","tags":["Angular","High-Performance Applications","Frontend","Optimization","Best practice"],"title":"Advanced Angular Change Detection: Strategies for High-Performance Applications"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-18T01:01:06+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/18/haskell-monads-functors-and-applicatives/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Functional programming offers a powerful paradigm for writing expressive and maintainable code. Haskell, a pure functional programming language, is at the forefront of this paradigm, providing robust tools for handling complex problems with simplicity and elegance. Among these tools, monads, functors, and applicatives stand out as foundational concepts that enable advanced functional programming techniques. In this post, we’ll delve into these concepts, illustrating how they can be utilized to write cleaner, more modular code. We’ll also explore a real-world use case and provide useful resources to further your understanding of Haskell.\n","tags":["Haskell","Monads","Functors","Applicatives","Functional Programming"],"title":"Exploring Advanced Functional Programming Techniques in Haskell: Monads, Functors, and Applicatives"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-17T02:16:21+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/17/advanced-dependency-injection-techniques-in-angular-tree-shakable-providers-and-injection-tokens/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"Dependency Injection (DI) is a fundamental design pattern in Angular that allows for the efficient management of dependencies within an application. By using DI, Angular promotes the principle of Inversion of Control (IoC), where the control of creating and managing dependencies is inverted from the component itself to an external framework. This results in more modular, testable, and maintainable code. In this post, we will explore two advanced DI techniques in Angular: Tree-Shakable Providers and Injection Tokens.\n","tags":["Angular","Frontend","Angular Providers"],"title":"Advanced Dependency Injection Techniques in Angular: Tree-Shakable Providers and Injection Tokens"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-16T01:10:11+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/16/advanced-security-practices-for-web-applications-implementing-csp-hsts-and-sri/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s digital age, the security of web applications is of paramount importance. With cyber-attacks becoming increasingly sophisticated, web developers must implement robust security measures to protect their applications and users. This blog post explores three advanced security practices—Content Security Policy (CSP), HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), and Subresource Integrity (SRI)—that can significantly enhance the security of web applications. We will delve into their implementation, use cases, and benefits, providing comprehensive guidance to help you secure your web applications effectively.\n","tags":["Security","Web Applications","CSP","HSTS","SRI"],"title":"Advanced Security Practices for Web Applications: Implementing CSP, HSTS, and SRI"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-15T18:12:21+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/15/mastering-concurrency-in-rust/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"Concurrency in modern software development is not just a luxury but a necessity. As applications grow more complex and user expectations for responsiveness increase, developers need to harness the power of concurrent programming to build efficient and scalable systems. Rust, with its unique ownership model, safety guarantees, and powerful concurrency primitives, provides an excellent foundation for tackling these challenges. In this post, we’ll dive deep into concurrency in Rust, focusing on advanced patterns with async/await and the Tokio runtime.\n","tags":["Rust","Tokio","Rust Concurrency","Linux"],"title":"Mastering Concurrency in Rust: Tokio Structured Concurrency and Async Patterns"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-14T17:02:20+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/14/advanced-state-management-in-react-with-recoil/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"Managing state in React applications has evolved significantly, from simple state hooks to sophisticated libraries that handle complex state scenarios. Recoil is a powerful state management library for React that addresses many limitations of traditional state management approaches. It provides a flexible and scalable way to handle state, particularly in large applications. This blog post will explore advanced state management techniques using Recoil, focusing on atom families, selectors, and handling asynchronous queries.\n","tags":["React","TypeScript","Recoil","State Management","Atom Families","Selectors","Async Queries"],"title":"Advanced State Management in React with Recoil: Atom Families, Selectors, and Async Queries"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-14T16:21:04+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/14/advanced-typeScript-types/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"TypeScript has transformed the way we write JavaScript by providing a static type system that helps developers catch errors early and write more robust code. While basic types and interfaces cover a significant portion of everyday use cases, TypeScript offers advanced features that can take your code to the next level of type safety and flexibility. In this post, we will dive deep into three advanced TypeScript features: Conditional Types, Mapped Types, and Recursive Types. These features are indispensable for creating highly adaptable and type-safe codebases.\n","tags":["TypeScript","Types","Mapped Types","Recursive Types","Conditional Types","Developers"],"title":"Deep Dive into Advanced TypeScript: Conditional Types, Mapped Types, and Recursive Types"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-13T02:24:38+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/13/why-good-developers-cant-find-jobs/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In the tech world, it’s not uncommon to hear stories of talented developers struggling to land a job, despite their evident skills and passion. Whether you’re a junior developer fresh out of a coding bootcamp or a senior developer with years of experience, the job market can be daunting. Let’s delve into some reasons why good developers sometimes can’t find jobs and explore strategies and tools to help them secure their dream roles.\n","tags":["Jobs","Hints","Skills","Resume","Developers","Career"],"title":"Why Good Developers Can't Find Jobs and How to Turn the Tide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-13T01:45:03+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/13/building-high-performance-web-applications-leveraging-webassembly-and-rust/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s fast-paced digital world, the performance of web applications has never been more critical. Users demand instant responses, seamless interactions, and rich functionalities. To meet these demands, developers are constantly exploring new technologies that promise to enhance the performance and capabilities of web applications. One such powerful combination is WebAssembly (Wasm) and Rust. This blog post will delve into how to build high-performance web applications by leveraging WebAssembly and Rust, highlighting the benefits, use cases, integration strategies, and real-world examples.\n","tags":["High-Performance Applications","WebAssembly","Rust","WebAssembly integration","Web Development"],"title":"Building High-Performance Web Applications: Leveraging WebAssembly and Rust"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-12T18:37:52+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/12/advanced-container-orchestration-beyond-kubernetes-basic/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"Container orchestration has revolutionized the way we deploy, manage, and scale applications. Kubernetes, the de facto standard for container orchestration, provides powerful capabilities out-of-the-box. However, as your applications grow in complexity, so do your orchestration needs. This is where advanced techniques come into play, pushing the boundaries of what Kubernetes can do. In this post, we will explore custom resource definitions (CRDs), service meshes like Istio, Kubernetes Operators, advanced scheduling techniques, and best practices for securing your Kubernetes clusters.\n","tags":["Container Orchestration","Kubernetes CRDs","service mesh Kubernetes","Kubernetes","DevOps","K8s"],"title":"Advanced Container Orchestration: Beyond Kubernetes Basics"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-12T00:33:06+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/12/dropbox-tray-icon-connecting/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" If you’re using Manjaro KDE and rely on Dropbox AUR for file syncing, you might have encountered a frustrating issue where the Dropbox tray icon perpetually shows “connecting” while the app itself works and syncs files perfectly in the background. After spending considerable time experimenting with various solutions, I finally found a fix that resolves this issue.\nThe Issue After installing the Dropbox AUR package on my Manjaro KDE system, everything seemed to work fine except for the tray icon. It kept displaying “connecting” indefinitely. This was annoying because it made it hard to quickly check the sync status of my files without opening the main application window.\n","tags":["Manjaro","KDE","Dropbox","AUR"],"title":"Solving the Dropbox Connecting Tray Icon Issue on Manjaro KDE"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-11T17:33:06+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/11/the-perils-of-improper-use-of-frameworks-and-libraries/","readingTime":12,"section":"posts","summary":"In the modern software development landscape, frameworks and libraries are indispensable tools that streamline processes, provide pre-built functionality, and facilitate rapid development. However, their improper use can lead to significant problems, ranging from performance bottlenecks to security vulnerabilities. Whether you are a junior developer just starting out, or a seasoned senior developer, understanding how to properly use these tools is crucial for building robust, maintainable, and efficient applications. This blog post will delve into the various aspects of improper use of frameworks and libraries, offering insights and best practices to help you avoid common pitfalls.\n","tags":["Software Development","Programming Best Practices","Web Development","Frameworks And Libraries","Code Quality","Security In Software","Developer Resources","Software Architecture"],"title":"The Perils of Improper Use of Frameworks and Libraries: A Comprehensive Guide for Developers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-10T17:05:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/10/common-mistakes-frontend-developers-make-and-how-to-avoid-them/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"As a frontend developer, creating a seamless, efficient, and visually appealing user experience is the ultimate goal. However, even the most experienced developers can fall into common traps that can impact the overall quality of their work. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most frequent mistakes made by frontend developers and how to avoid them.\n1. Ignoring Cross-Browser Compatibility Cross-browser compatibility ensures that your website functions correctly across different browsers. Ignoring this can lead to a poor user experience for those not using your preferred browser.\n","tags":["Frontend","Coding Best Practices","Web Performance","Responsive Design","Accessibility"],"title":"Common Mistakes Frontend Developers Make and How to Avoid Them"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-10T00:01:18+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/10/conflict-resolution-in-tech-teams-advanced-mediation-techniques/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Conflict is an inevitable part of any workplace, and tech teams are no exception. Differences in opinions, approaches, and personal styles can lead to friction. However, when managed effectively, conflict can be a catalyst for growth, innovation, and stronger teamwork. This blog post explores advanced techniques for resolving conflicts within tech teams, covering mediation strategies, active listening, and fostering a collaborative environment.\nUnderstanding Conflict in Tech Teams Tech teams are often composed of individuals with diverse skills, backgrounds, and perspectives. While this diversity is a strength, it can also lead to misunderstandings and disagreements. Common sources of conflict in tech teams include:\n","tags":["Conflict Resolution","Tech Teams","Mediation Techniques","Team Collaboration","Active Listening","Workplace Communication","Team Dynamics","Soft Skills","Engineering Leadership"],"title":"Conflict Resolution in Tech Teams: Advanced Mediation Techniques"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-09T18:43:24+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/09/next-generation-databases-newsql-distributed-sql-and-beyond/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the need for databases that can handle massive volumes of data with high performance, scalability, and consistency has never been more critical. Traditional databases, while robust, often struggle to meet these demands. This has paved the way for next-generation databases, including NewSQL and distributed SQL, which are designed to address these challenges head-on. In this blog post, we will explore the world of next-generation databases, focusing on NewSQL, distributed SQL, and other innovative database technologies that are revolutionizing enterprise applications.\n","tags":["Database","DevOps","NewSQL","Distributed SQL","NoSQL","Google Spanner","CockroachDB","VoltDB","YugaByteDB","Citus","InfluxDB","Neo4j","ArangoDB"],"title":"Next-Generation Databases: NewSQL, Distributed SQL, and Beyond"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-08T00:37:30+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/08/real-time-data-in-frontend-applications/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s digital age, the demand for real-time data in frontend applications has surged dramatically. Users expect instantaneous updates, seamless interactions, and dynamic content without the need for manual refreshes. This blog post delves into various methods for handling real-time data in frontend applications, including WebSockets, Server-Sent Events (SSE), and emerging technologies such as HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 Push, WebTransport, GraphQL Subscriptions, and gRPC Streams. We’ll explore their implementation patterns, performance considerations, and relevant use cases.\n","tags":["Frontend","WebSockets","SSE","GraphQL","gRPC","HTTP2","HTTP3","HTTP Push","Apollo Client","nginx"],"title":"Real-Time Data in Frontend Applications: WebSockets, SSE, and Beyond"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-07T00:20:07+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/07/advanced-animations-in-frontend-development/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Animations have become a crucial aspect of modern web design, enhancing user experience and adding a dynamic quality to websites and applications. While basic animations can be achieved with simple CSS transitions, advanced animations often require a combination of CSS, SVG, and JavaScript. This post will delve into advanced techniques for creating animations, focusing on performance optimization, easing functions, and best practices to ensure smooth and engaging animations.\nCSS Animations CSS animations are the backbone of web animations, offering a powerful and efficient way to create sophisticated animations with minimal code. Here are some advanced techniques:\n","tags":["CSS","Frontend","Sample Code","Animations","SVG","JavaScript","Performance Optimization"],"title":"Advanced Animations in Frontend Development: CSS, SVG, and JavaScript"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-07T00:06:46+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/07/advanced-css-grid-layouts/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In the evolving world of web design, creating flexible and dynamic layouts that work seamlessly across devices is paramount. CSS Grid Layout, introduced with CSS3, revolutionizes the way we build web layouts by providing a two-dimensional grid-based layout system. While many designers are familiar with basic grid concepts, mastering advanced CSS Grid techniques can elevate your responsive design skills to a new level. In this post, we’ll dive into complex grid layouts, responsive design strategies, and best practices for ensuring cross-browser compatibility.\n","tags":["CSS","Frontend","Responsive Design","Sample Code"],"title":"Advanced CSS Grid Layouts: Techniques and Tricks for Responsive Design"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-06T22:08:53+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/06/building-resilient-teams/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of technology, building resilient teams is critical for sustained success. Resilience enables teams to adapt to change, overcome challenges, and maintain high performance levels. This comprehensive guide explores various strategies to enhance team resilience, focusing on managing stress, promoting work-life balance, and fostering a supportive team culture.\nUnderstanding Team Resilience Resilience in a team context refers to the collective capacity to recover from setbacks, adapt to change, and keep progressing toward goals. It involves not just bouncing back from difficulties but also growing stronger and more capable. A resilient team can navigate the uncertainties of the tech industry, where rapid innovation and constant change are the norms.\n","tags":["Team Resilience","TechTeam Wellbeing","Work-Life Balance","Stress Management","Professional Development","Supportive Culture","Soft Skills","Engineering Leadership"],"title":"Building Resilient Teams: Strategies for Enhancing Team Performance and Well-being"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-06T03:11:52+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/06/chaos-engineering/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":"Distributed systems fail in ways unit tests never simulate. A replica set lags behind, a dependency times out under load, a deployment rolls out to half the cluster before someone notices the new health check is wrong. On the client, a payment API returns an empty body after thirty seconds of latency and checkout silently confirms $0.00. Monitoring tells you something broke after the fact. Load tests tell you how the system behaves when everything is working but busy. Chaos engineering asks a sharper question: when this specific component fails, does the rest of the system absorb it?\n","tags":["Chaos Engineering","System Resilience","Failure Testing","DevOps","Site Reliability Engineering","Software Robustness","Reliability Testing","Software Architecture"],"title":"Chaos Engineering: Principles and Practice"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-05T18:31:15+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/05/server-side-rendering-ssr-with-nextjs-nestjs-nuxtjs/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, ensuring optimal performance and excellent SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become paramount. One of the techniques gaining significant traction is Server-Side Rendering (SSR), especially with modern frameworks such as Next.js for React, Nuxt.js for Vue.js, and NestJS for Node.js. This post delves into SSR, its impact on performance and SEO, and how it compares to traditional Client-Side Rendering (CSR).\nUnderstanding Server-Side Rendering (SSR) Server-Side Rendering involves rendering web pages on the server instead of the client’s browser. This means that when a user requests a webpage, the server processes the necessary data, renders the HTML, and sends it to the client’s browser. The browser then simply displays the pre-rendered HTML, resulting in faster initial load times and improved SEO.\n","tags":["NodeJs","NestJS","NextJS","NuxtJS","SSR","Web Development","SEO"],"title":"Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with Modern Frameworks: Performance and SEO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-05T18:21:24+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/05/edge-computing-architectures-and-use-cases/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In the evolving landscape of technology, edge computing has emerged as a transformative approach to data processing and delivery. By bringing computation and data storage closer to the data sources, edge computing significantly reduces latency, enhances data security, and enables real-time processing. This post delves into the architecture of edge computing, explores its benefits, and highlights practical applications in IoT and content delivery.\nUnderstanding Edge Computing Architecture At its core, edge computing shifts the computation and data storage from centralized data centers to the edge of the network, closer to where data is generated. This architectural change is driven by the need to process large volumes of data quickly and efficiently.\n","tags":["Edge Computing","IoT","Data Processing","Latency Reduction","Smart Cities"],"title":"Edge Computing: Architectures and Use Cases"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-05T01:34:40+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/05/distributed-systems-design-patterns-and-practices/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s world of massive-scale applications and services, distributed systems have become the backbone of modern computing. They enable applications to handle vast amounts of data, remain resilient in the face of failures, and deliver high performance across the globe. However, designing these systems is not a trivial task. It involves understanding complex principles and implementing robust patterns to ensure they meet the desired specifications. In this blog post, we’ll dive deeper into the core principles and patterns of distributed system design, covering consistency models, the CAP theorem, fault tolerance, and essential patterns like Saga, Circuit Breaker, and Bulkhead.\n","tags":["Distributed Systems","Microservices","Fault Tolerance","CAP Theorem","Design Patterns","Software Architecture"],"title":"Distributed Systems Design: Patterns and Practices"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-05T01:03:34+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/05/advanced-api-design-rest-graphql-and-grpc/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"APIs are the cornerstone of modern applications, enabling seamless communication between services. The design of these APIs plays a crucial role in determining the efficiency, scalability, and overall performance of an application. Three of the most prominent approaches in API design are REST, GraphQL, and gRPC. Each approach has unique strengths and weaknesses, making them suitable for different use cases. In this post, we’ll dive deep into these advanced techniques, discuss best practices, performance considerations, and provide guidance on choosing the right protocol for your specific needs.\n","tags":["API Design","REST","GraphQL","gRPC","Web Development","Software Architecture"],"title":"Advanced API Design: REST, GraphQL, and gRPC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-04T03:19:49+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/04/event-driven-architectures-building-scalable-and-resilient-systems/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, the ability to build scalable and resilient systems is crucial for businesses to thrive. Event-driven architectures (EDA) have emerged as a powerful paradigm to address these needs. By focusing on events as the primary means of communication between components, EDA allows for systems that are not only scalable and resilient but also flexible and easier to maintain. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the principles and practices of event-driven architectures, including event sourcing, CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation), and the use of message brokers like Kafka or RabbitMQ.\n","tags":["Event-Driven Architecture","EDA","Scalable Systems","Resilient Design","Event Sourcing","CQRS","RabbitMQ","Kafka","Software Architecture"],"title":"Event-Driven Architectures: Building Scalable and Resilient Systems"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-03T22:35:29+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/03/advanced-webassembly-enhancing-web-performance-and-capability/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, performance and capability are paramount. WebAssembly (Wasm) has emerged as a powerful tool, allowing developers to enhance web performance and unlock new functionality. This blog post delves into the advanced capabilities of WebAssembly, explores its use cases, shares best practices, and highlights tools like AssemblyScript and Emscripten that facilitate its adoption.\nWhat is WebAssembly? WebAssembly is a binary instruction format designed to be a portable compilation target for high-level languages like C, C++, and Rust. It allows code written in these languages to run in the web browser with near-native performance. WebAssembly is designed to complement JavaScript, providing a way to execute compute-intensive tasks efficiently.\n","tags":["Frontend","WebAssembly","Web Performance","Web Development","JavaScript","High-Performance Computing"],"title":"Advanced WebAssembly: Enhancing Web Performance and Capability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-03T03:24:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/03/security-best-practices-in-angular-protecting-your-applications/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In the world of web development, security is paramount. As developers, we strive to build robust and secure applications that protect user data and ensure a seamless user experience. Angular, being one of the most popular frameworks for building web applications, offers several features and best practices to enhance the security of your applications. In this post, we’ll delve into advanced security topics such as XSS protection, CSRF prevention, JWT authentication, and secure HTTP headers. Let’s explore how you can safeguard your Angular applications.\n","tags":["Frontend","Angular","Angular Security","XSS","CSRF","JWT"],"title":"Security Best Practices in Angular: Protecting Your Applications"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-03T02:13:06+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/03/building-custom-angular-schematics-automating-code-generation/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In the fast-paced world of web development, efficiency and consistency are key. Repetitive tasks can slow down productivity, and inconsistent code can lead to maintenance nightmares. Enter Angular Schematics—a powerful tool to automate code generation, enforce architectural standards, and improve code quality. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into creating custom Angular schematics, helping you streamline your development workflow and ensure your codebase remains robust and maintainable.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Explore the complete working example on GitHub. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/angular-custom-schematics View on GitHub What are Angular Schematics? Angular Schematics are code generators that transform a software project by creating, modifying, or removing files and code snippets. They’re integral to the Angular CLI (Command Line Interface) and are used to scaffold new applications, add features, and enforce best practices.\n","tags":["Frontend","Custom Angular Schematics","Angular Code Generation","Angular Schematics","Angular"],"title":"Building Custom Angular Schematics: Automating Code Generation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-02T17:17:02+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/02/is-building-your-own-design-system-worth-it/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":"In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, the question of whether to build and develop your own design system is a common one. As design systems become more integral to creating cohesive, scalable, and efficient applications, it’s crucial to weigh the benefits and challenges. This blog post delves into the worthiness of developing a custom design system, best practices for building one, when it’s needed, and the role of JavaScript frameworks like Angular. Additionally, we’ll explore which development teams should be involved in this process and provide a real-world example for clarity.\n","tags":["Design Systems","Web Development","UI/UX","Frontend","JavaScript Frameworks","Engineering Leadership"],"title":"Is Building Your Own Design System Worth It? Best Practices, Key Considerations and Real-World Example"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-06-01T00:50:01+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/06/01/integrating-graphql-with-angular-a-practical-guide/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"GraphQL is a powerful query language for APIs, providing a flexible and efficient alternative to REST. Combining it with Angular, a robust front-end framework, can lead to highly dynamic and responsive web applications. In this guide, we’ll explore how to integrate GraphQL with Angular, leveraging the Apollo Client for seamless data management.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Try the working example in your browser or inspect the full source code behind this article. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/angular-graphql-apollo Open live demo View on GitHub 1. Introduction to GraphQL and Angular What is GraphQL? GraphQL is an open-source data query language developed by Facebook. It allows clients to request exactly the data they need, making APIs more flexible and efficient.\n","tags":["Frontend","Angular","GraphQL","Apollo Client","Angular Integrations"],"title":"Integrating GraphQL with Angular: A Practical Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-31T23:52:23+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/31/design-patterns-in-angular-enhancing-code-quality-and-maintainability/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular, one of the most popular frameworks for building robust web applications, provides a comprehensive toolkit for developers. However, to truly harness its power, understanding and applying design patterns is crucial. Design patterns offer proven solutions to common problems, making your code more organized, reusable, and maintainable. In this blog post, we’ll delve into some advanced design patterns and their application in Angular, helping you enhance your code quality and maintainability.\n","tags":["Frontend","Software Development","Design Patterns","Angular","Code Quality","Software Architecture"],"title":"Design Patterns in Angular: Enhancing Code Quality and Maintainability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-31T00:54:26+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/31/effective-task-management-in-small-large-and-multi-team-development-environments/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s fast-paced development landscape, effective task management is crucial for success. Whether you’re operating within a small team, a large organization, or a multi-team environment, managing tasks efficiently can make a significant difference in productivity, collaboration, and project outcomes. This blog post explores strategies for task management across different team sizes and structures, highlighting the roles of key personnel including CTOs, team leaders, and other common team members. We will also compare communication, flexibility, meetings, task allocation, monitoring, and challenges faced in these environments.\n","tags":["Task Management","Software Development","Team Collaboration","Agile Methodology","Project Management","Engineering Leadership"],"title":"Effective Task Management in Small, Large and Multi-Team Development Environments"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-30T00:17:34+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/30/building-a-scalable-cloud-architecture-tips-and-tools-and-frontend-considerations/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses need to ensure that their infrastructure can handle growth and scale effectively. This is where a well-designed, scalable cloud architecture comes into play. Building a scalable cloud architecture involves more than just migrating existing systems to the cloud; it requires thoughtful planning, the right tools, and best practices to ensure your applications and services can grow with your business needs.\nUnderstanding Scalable Cloud Architecture A scalable cloud architecture is designed to grow and manage increased demand by efficiently utilizing cloud resources. It allows businesses to handle higher loads without compromising performance or incurring prohibitive costs. Key characteristics of a scalable cloud architecture include:\n","tags":["Frontend","Cloud architecture","Scalability","Cloud Computing","AWS","Azure"],"title":"Building a Scalable Cloud Architecture: Tips, Tools, and Frontend Considerations"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-29T00:14:02+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/29/a-comprehensive-guide-to-frontend-testing/","readingTime":12,"section":"posts","summary":"Frontend testing is an essential aspect of modern web development, helping teams verify that applications behave as expected across browsers, devices, and user scenarios. This guide covers the main frontend testing categories, common tools, and practical planning steps you can use to build a healthier test suite.\nWhy is Frontend Testing Important? Frontend testing is crucial because it helps deliver a reliable and high-quality user experience. Here are a few key reasons why it’s important:\n","tags":["Frontend","Testing","JavaScript","Web Development","Unit Testing","Integration Testing","E2E Testing","Test Automation","Quality Assurance"],"title":"Frontend Testing: A Comprehensive Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-28T16:18:18+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/28/introduction-to-docker-simplifying-application-deployment/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"In the modern era of software development, Docker has become an indispensable tool for developers and DevOps engineers. It streamlines the process of deploying applications by providing a consistent environment across different stages of development, testing, and production. In this blog post, we’ll explore what Docker is, how to install it, and demonstrate a common use case: running a local WordPress site using Docker Compose.\nWhat is Docker? Docker is an open-source platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of applications. It does this by using containerization, which packages an application and its dependencies into a single, lightweight container. Containers are isolated from each other and the host system, ensuring that the application runs consistently regardless of the environment.\n","tags":["Docker","Containerization","DevOps","Docker Compose"],"title":"Introduction to Docker: Simplifying Application Deployment"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-28T02:25:34+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/28/software-architecture-and-design-principles/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"In the ever-evolving world of software development, one term consistently stands out: software architecture. Often likened to the architectural blueprint of a building, software architecture lays the foundational structure for an application, guiding its development, maintenance, and scalability. But what exactly is software architecture, and why is it so crucial? Let’s explore the intricacies of this pivotal aspect of software engineering.\nWhat is Software Architecture? Software architecture refers to the high-level structure of a software system, encompassing the arrangement of components, their relationships, and the principles guiding their design and evolution. It’s not just about code; it’s about the big picture, ensuring that the software system is robust, maintainable, and scalable.\n","tags":["Software Architecture","Design Principles","Software Development","Microservices","Monolithic Architecture","Layered Architecture","Event-Driven Architecture","Scalability","Maintainability","Performance Optimization","Quality Attributes","Software Engineering","Coding Best Practices","System Design","Development Patterns"],"title":"Demystifying Software Architecture: Building the Backbone of Modern Applications"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-27T00:36:07+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/27/getting-started-with-kubernetes-a-beginners-guide/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, containerization has become a fundamental aspect of modern software development and deployment. At the heart of this revolution lies Kubernetes, an open-source platform designed to automate deploying, scaling, and operating application containers. If you’re new to Kubernetes and looking to get started, this guide will help you understand the basics and set you on the path to becoming proficient with this powerful tool.\nWhat is Kubernetes? Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is a container orchestration platform originally developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It helps manage containerized applications across a cluster of nodes, providing mechanisms for deployment, scaling, and operations.\n","tags":["Kubernetes","Container Orchestration","Docker","Cloud-native Applications","DevOps"],"title":"Getting Started with Kubernetes: A Beginner’s Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-24T02:34:58+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/24/essential-skills-for-a-frontend-team-leader/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Becoming a Frontend Team Leader is an exciting and challenging career step. It demands a blend of leadership, management, and technical expertise, alongside a robust set of soft skills. While technical prowess is fundamental, excelling in leadership and management and cultivating strong interpersonal skills are paramount for steering your team to success. In this blog post, we will explore the essential skills a Frontend Team Leader should develop, focusing particularly on leadership, management, and soft skills.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","roadmap","essential skills","Engineering Leadership","Career"],"title":"Essential Skills for a Frontend Team Leader"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-23T23:50:48+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/23/transitioning-from-angular-to-java/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"As an experienced Angular developer, you might be considering expanding your skill set by learning Java. This transition can be both challenging and rewarding, offering you a broader perspective on software development. In this blog post, we’ll explore how your Angular background can aid your journey into Java, and provide you with a detailed roadmap to get started.\nLeveraging Your Angular Experience Your background in Angular provides a solid foundation for learning Java. Here’s how your existing skills will help:\n","tags":["Frontend","backend","development","java","Angular","Career"],"title":"Transitioning from Angular to Java: A Comprehensive Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-22T20:07:46+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/22/migrate-css-bootstrap-to-tailwind/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"Migrating from Bootstrap and custom CSS to Tailwind is not just a search-and-replace exercise. The hard part is preserving product intent: spacing, responsive behavior, states, brand colors, shadows, and the little overrides that accumulated while the application was evolving.\nThe companion demo for this post now uses a small CRM dashboard and pricing page instead of a single button or card. That gives us a more realistic migration surface: navigation, hero content, metric cards, status badges, a pipeline list, pricing cards, responsive layout, and custom brand styling.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","CSS","tailwind","migrate","Bootstrap"],"title":"Migrating an Existing Project from Pure CSS and Bootstrap to Tailwind CSS: A Comprehensive Guide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-22T16:00:22+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/22/debugging-angular-a-tale-of-two-developers/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"In any software development project, encountering bugs and issues is inevitable. How we approach these problems often distinguishes a junior developer from a senior one. Today, we’ll walk through a more complex and challenging issue in an Angular project and compare how a junior and a senior developer might handle it.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Try the working example in your browser or inspect the full source code behind this article. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/angular-dynamic-form-debugging Open live demo View on GitHub The Issue Our Angular application is supposed to display a dynamic form based on metadata fetched from an API. The form structure is defined in the metadata, which includes information about the fields, their types, and validation rules. Despite the metadata being correctly fetched and parsed, the form does not render correctly, and the validation rules are not applied.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular"],"title":"Debugging Angular: A Tale of Two Developers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-17T01:46:11+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/17/essential-skills-for-a-successful-senior-fullstack-developer/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"We already talked about latest trends for Angular Development and then about Essential Skills for a Frontend Developer, but what if you want to grow your stack to backend too and become a full stack developer?\nAs technology evolves, so does the role of a full-stack developer. To remain effective and ahead of the curve, a senior full-stack developer must continually expand their knowledge base. This encompasses technical skills, soft skills, and advanced topics, along with a deep understanding of best practices and key concepts. Let’s explore what each of these areas entails for a senior full-stack developer striving for success.\n","tags":["Frontend","fullstack","development","roadmap","essential skills","Career"],"title":"Essential Skills for a Successful Senior Full-Stack Developer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-16T18:42:26+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/16/essential-skills-for-a-successful-senior-frontend-developer/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"As the web development landscape continually evolves, a successful senior frontend developer must keep pace with both technological advancements and shifting industry standards. Here’s a comprehensive guide to the skills and knowledge areas essential for any senior frontend developer aiming to stay at the top of their game, divided into Technical Skills, Soft Skills, Best Practices and Concepts, and Advanced Topics.\nTechnical Skills 1. Advanced JavaScript JavaScript remains the cornerstone of frontend development. A senior developer should master:\n","tags":["Frontend","development","roadmap","essential skills","Career"],"title":"Essential Skills for a Successful Senior Frontend Developer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-16T17:19:41+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/16/latest-trends-for-angular-developers-in-2024/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"As an Angular developer, staying updated with the latest trends in frontend development is crucial for keeping your skills relevant and your projects modern. The frontend landscape is constantly evolving, and embracing these trends can help you create better-performing, more maintainable, and more engaging applications. Here are some of the latest trends you should be aware of:\n1. Micro Frontends Micro Frontends are gaining significant traction as they allow large applications to be divided into smaller, manageable pieces, each developed and deployed independently. This approach enhances scalability and team productivity, especially in large organizations. Micro Frontends.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular","trends","roadmap","essential skills"],"title":"Staying Ahead: Latest Trends in Frontend Development for Angular Developers in 2024"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-12T00:05:09+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/12/micro-frontends-vs-monorepo-vs-reusable-shared-module/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Managing multiple Angular projects can be a daunting task, especially as teams grow and codebases become more complex. In this article, we’ll explore three common approaches for managing multiple Angular projects: Micro Frontends, Monorepo, and Reusable Shared Module. We’ll compare their advantages, disadvantages, and suitability for different scenarios to help you make an informed decision for your Angular projects.\nMicro Frontends Consider a large e-commerce platform comprising several distinct sections, including product catalog, shopping cart, checkout, and user profile. With micro frontends, each section can be developed and deployed independently as a separate micro frontend. This enables different teams to work autonomously on their respective sections, improving development speed, scalability, and flexibility.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular","Micro Frontends","Monorepo"],"title":"Choosing the Right Approach for Managing Multiple Angular Projects: Micro Frontends vs. Monorepo vs. Reusable Shared Module"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-12T00:05:09+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/12/reusable-shared-module-in-angular/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In Angular development, creating reusable shared modules is a powerful way to encapsulate common functionality, UI components, services, and styles that can be used across different projects or repositories. In this guide, we’ll walk through the process of creating a reusable shared module from scratch, covering directory structures, component/service/directive creation, shared styles, and both development (npm link) and production (npm publish) use cases.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Try the working example in your browser or inspect the full source code behind this article. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/angular-shared-library-workspace Open live demo View on GitHub Step 1: Generate a Library The first step is to generate an Angular library project within your workspace using the Angular CLI:\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular"],"title":"Creating a Reusable Shared Module in Angular for Cross-Repository Usage"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-11T17:52:46+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/11/micro-frontends-working-example/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"Now let’s explore a working example to understand it better.\nCompanion resource Companion Project Try the working example in your browser or inspect the full source code behind this article. github.com/omidfarhang/example-projects/examples/qwik-angular-react-rust Open live demo View on GitHub Building a Micro Frontend Architecture with Qwik, Angular, React, and Rust Micro frontend architecture is a practical way to develop scalable and modular web applications. By breaking down a monolithic frontend into smaller, independently deployable modules, teams can work more efficiently and scale their applications with ease.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular","qwik","React","Rust","Micro Frontends"],"title":"Micro Frontends: Working Example"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-09T14:09:02+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/09/micro-frontends-how/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"As web applications grow in complexity, maintaining a consistent tech stack becomes crucial for efficiency and scalability. If you have multiple projects using different frameworks, like Angular and React, unifying them can seem daunting. However, Micro Frontends offer a modern solution to this challenge, allowing you to integrate diverse projects seamlessly. Here’s how you can leverage Micro Frontends to unify your Angular and React projects.\nMicro Frontends extend the microservices idea to the frontend world. They allow different teams to develop and deploy their frontend applications independently. Each part of the application can be built using different frameworks or libraries and then integrated into a larger application.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular","qwik","React","Rust","Micro Frontends"],"title":"Micro Frontends: How?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2024-05-09T13:55:01+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2024/05/09/micro-frontends-why/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Micro frontends is an architectural pattern for building web applications as a composition of loosely coupled, independently deployable frontend modules. It extends the principles of microservices to the frontend, allowing teams to develop, deploy, and scale parts of the user interface independently. In essence, micro frontends break down a large, monolithic frontend application into smaller, more manageable pieces, each with its own technology stack, development team, and deployment pipeline.\nKey characteristics of micro frontends Modularity: Micro frontends promote modularity by dividing the user interface into smaller, self-contained units called micro frontends. Each micro frontend represents a cohesive set of features or functionality, allowing teams to focus on developing and maintaining specific parts of the application.\n","tags":["Frontend","development","Angular","qwik","React","Rust","Micro Frontends"],"title":"Micro Frontends: Why?"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2023-01-16T00:51:46+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2023/01/16/neanderthals-used-to-cook-complex-foods/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I found this article from TheGuardian interesting:\nIf you thought Neanderthals survived on a diet of foraged berries and uncooked animal flesh, think again. Charred remnants of what appears to be the world’s oldest cooked meal ever found have been unearthed in a cave complex in northern Iraq, prompting speculation that Neanderthals may have been foodies.\nHunt and his colleagues have even tried to recreate one of the recipes, using seeds gathered from nearby the caves. “It made a sort of pancake-cum-flatbread which was really very palatable – a sort of nutty taste,” Hunt said.\n","tags":["History","Good Reads"],"title":"Neanderthals used to cook complex foods"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2023-01-15T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2023/01/16/linux-malware-targets-wordPress-and-common-plugins/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Doctor Web has discovered a malicious Linux program that hacks websites based on a WordPress CMS. It exploits 30 vulnerabilities in a number of plugins and themes for this platform. If sites use outdated versions of such add-ons, lacking crucial fixes, the targeted webpages are injected with malicious JavaScripts. As a result, when users click on any area of an attacked page, they are redirected to other sites.\nWhat they can do? Upon their command, it is able to perform the following actions:\n","tags":["Malware","WordPress","plugins","Linux","Security"],"title":"Linux Malware targets WordPress and common Plugins"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2023-01-10T17:56:31+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2023/01/10/end-of-microsoft-windows-7-security-updates-since-jan10/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Starting today, January 10th, Windows 7 Enterprise and Professional operating systems will no longer receive security updates. Thus, computers that still run these OS will no longer be protected against critical vulnerabilities.\nApart from the operating system itself, browsers (both Edge and third-party browsers), as well as services from other non-Microsoft vendors, such as NVIDIA, have confirmed that they have also stopped offering new security patches in Windows 7.\nActions to be taken You should upgrade your Microsoft Windows to newer versions, if your hardware does not support Windows 11, you may upgrade to Windows 10 or maybe consider switching to another Operation System like Linux.\n","tags":["Security","Microsoft","Windows","eol","Windows 10"],"title":"End of Microsoft Windows 7 security updates from today"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2022-12-30T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/12/30/how-to-upgrade-ubuntu/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Update Release Name in Sources To start upgrading you need to change the /etc/apt/sources.list file and replace the name of your previous release with new one. So, for example if you are 20.04, replace every instance of focal with kinetic. If you currently have 22.04, replace jammy with kinetic.\nThis process can be automated by using the following sed command:\n1 sudo sed -i 's/jammy/kinetic/g' /etc/apt/sources.list Then, look in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/. Change any files in there the same way.\n","tags":["How to","Linux","Ubuntu"],"title":"How to Upgrade Ubuntu"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2022-12-30T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/12/30/how-to-upgrade-ubuntu-kernel/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Ubuntu by default uses LTS Kernels:\nCanonical provides long-term support (LTS) kernels for Ubuntu LTS releases. Canonical also provides interim operating system releases with updated kernels every 6 months.\nFor customers and business partners that don’t have specialised bleeding-edge workloads or latest hardware needs, the latest LTS release ”-generic” kernel is the best option for them such as the 4.15 default kernel in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Customers who need the latest hardware support capability can install the latest HWE kernel such as the ones contained in interim releases, keeping in mind the shorter support lifespan associated with these kernels (9 months). HWE kernel customers are recommended to upgrade to a newer LTS release that supports their hardware and/or software needs as soon as it is available. Another option for customers is to use point releases. For example, there is an 18.04.4 point release as of February 2020, which includes an updated 5.3.x kernel but is also considered LTS, exactly like the original GA 4.15 kernel in 18.04.\n","tags":["How to","Linux","Ubuntu","Kernel"],"title":"How to Upgrade Ubuntu Kernel"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2022-12-29T01:21:22+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/12/29/farewell-lastpass-we-dont-need-more-data-breach/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"You’ve heard it again and again: You need to use a password manager to generate strong, unique passwords and keep track of them for you. And if you finally took the plunge with a free and mainstream option, particularly during the 2010s, it was probably LastPass. For the security service’s 25.6 million users, though, the company made a worrying announcement last week: A security incident the firm previously reported on November 30 was actually a massive and concerning data breach that exposed encrypted password vaults—the crown jewels of any password manager—along with other user data.\n","tags":["Security","App Suggestions","Password"],"title":"Farewell Lastpass, We don't need more data breach"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2022-12-12T23:37:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/12/16/cross-platform-botnet-targets-ssh-enabled-devices/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft researchers found a cross-platform botnet that originates from malicious software downloads on Windows devices \u0026 succeeds in propagating to a variety of Linux-based devices by enumerating default credentials on internet-exposed SSH-enabled devices.\nMicrosoft researchers observed that the initial infection points related to the botnet were devices infected through the installation of malicious cracking tools that purport to acquire illegal Windows licenses. The cracking tools contain additional code that downloads and launches a fake version of svchost.exe through a PowerShell command. In some cases, the downloaded file is named svchosts.exe.\n","tags":["Malware","Windows","ssh","Linux","botnet","Security"],"title":"Cross-platform botnet targets SSH-enabled devices"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2022-12-12T23:37:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/12/12/molybdenum-deficiency-is-very-rare-not-in-iran/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" What is Molybdenum? Molybdenum is a chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42 which is located in period 5 and group 6. The name is from Neo-Latin molybdaenum, which is based on Ancient Greek Μόλυβδος molybdos, meaning lead, since its ores were confused with lead ores.\nWhy Molybdenum Is an Essential Nutrient You may not have heard of the trace mineral molybdenum, but it is essential to your health.\n","tags":["Health","Iran","minerals","Good Reads"],"title":"Molybdenum deficiency is very rare, but not in Iran"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2022-11-27T01:33:51+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/11/27/how-to-use-cloudflare-warp-on-linux/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"What is WARP? The Cloudflare WARP client allows individuals and organizations to have a faster, more secure, and more private experience online. The WARP client sits between your device and the Internet, and has several connection modes to better suit different needs.\nInstall Installing Warp Client (aka Cloudflare Zero Trust Client) is so easy, specially if your OS uses AUR.\nAUR Use your AUR helper to find and install cloudflare-warp-bin, for example I use yay here:\n","tags":["Linux","CloudFlare","Warp","network","Manjaro","Ubuntu"],"title":"How To Use Cloudflare WARP On Linux"},{"categories":["Health"],"date":"2022-11-04T00:55:30+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2022/11/04/saturated-fat-does-not-clog-the-arteries/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I’ve been reading an article from medicalnewstoday.com and I found this part interesting:\nA team of cardiologists wrote an article stating that eating foods with saturated fat does not clog the arteries, as people once believed. They contend that the “fat free” movement caused higher intakes of carbohydrate foods, including sugars. This might explain why rates of heart disease have increased.\nHere is the link to the article mentioned above from BMJ Journal: Saturated fat does not clog the arteries: coronary heart disease is a chronic inflammatory condition, the risk of which can be effectively reduced from healthy lifestyle interventions\n","tags":["Health","medical","Good Reads"],"title":"Eating foods with saturated fat does not clog the arteries"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2020-05-16T00:45:20Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2020/05/16/all-these-years-static-x/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Did you miss Wayne Static? Yup, me too.\nIt’s very challenging to represent someone in a music video, who is no longer alive, but that was something that we really wanted to do and I think it came out great, These are some of Wayne’s last works, so we really wanted to make this video all about him and to continue to celebrate his life and legacy. What better way to do that than through a fun, fictional story about how Wayne was inspired to become the legend that who he became through Static-X. says drummer Ken Jay.\n","tags":["Music","Music Video"],"title":"All These Years – Static-X"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2019-06-05T00:45:20Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2019/06/05/install-and-configure-oh-my-zsh-and-use-it-in-vscode-in-linux/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"TL;DR\nInstall zsh, then run the Oh My Zsh installer on Ubuntu, Manjaro, or Arch. Enable the vscode plugin, add Powerlevel10k, and install a Meslo Nerd Font. Periodically git pull custom themes/plugins under $ZSH_CUSTOM — Oh My Zsh’s auto-update does not cover them. Point the VS Code integrated terminal or Cursor IDE terminal at /usr/bin/zsh in settings.json. On Manjaro, also see How to Install Cursor IDE on Manjaro Linux. If you use the simple Bash Terminal in your OS, you may want to give Zsh a try to use a faster and safer terminal with many more features. The simple Bash that exist in the common dist of Linuxes are not changed over years and just received some security fixes, but the community behind Zsh are improving it everyday and bring new useful plugins.\n","tags":["Kubuntu","Manjaro","Arch Linux","oh my zsh","Ubuntu","Cursor IDE","VS Code","zsh","Linux"],"title":"Install and Configure Oh My Zsh and use it in VSCode or Cursor"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2018-05-24T22:50:53Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2018/05/24/set-permanent-custom-resolution-for-ubuntu-and-kde/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" TL;DR\nGenerate a modeline with cvt, add it with xrandr --newmode / --addmode, then enable it on your output. Session-only changes vanish on reboot and never fix the login screen. On KDE/Kubuntu with SDDM, put the same commands in Xsetup so they run before the greeter. After I switched from GNOME/Unity to KDE, SDDM would not pick up my ultrawide panel. It stuck at Full HD instead of 2560×1080. I had hit the same class of problem earlier on Ubuntu with an older monitor whose native mode never showed up in the display settings.\n","tags":["Linux","Ubuntu","Kubuntu","KDE","SDDM","xrandr","CLI","How to"],"title":"Set a Permanent Custom Resolution on Ubuntu and KDE with xrandr and Xsetup"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2017-07-06T19:14:41Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2017/07/06/google-chrome-ubuntu-keeps-detecting-network-change/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Recently I had problem with my Ubuntu, Whenever I tried to open a website my Chromium told me that a Network Change has been detected and after 1-2 reload that sites would load and sometimes failed to load fully.\nAfter looking up for that problem, I found out many other people had same problem and it has something to do with “avahi-daemon”.\nSolution According to the links I found in Ubuntu forums, this problem comes from IPv6 in Ubuntu and disabling that service will fix it, I tried it and it worked:\n","tags":["chrome","Google","Linux","networking","Ubuntu"],"title":"Google Chrome in Ubuntu keeps detecting network change"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2017-05-22T10:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2017/05/22/laravel-and-angularjs-to-spring-boot-and-angular/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"In January I wrote about moving our frontend from AngularJS to Angular. That migration is still running — we are on Angular 4 now, which shipped in March and turned out to be a painless bump from 2.4. The bigger shift landed on the backend: our APIs used to live in Laravel, and we are rewriting them in Java with Spring Boot 1.5.3.\nThis is my first real Java project. I have years of PHP — mostly Laravel — and a few months of TypeScript from the Angular work. I also wrote C# in college, which turns out to matter more than I expected. Java does not feel like learning a foreign language. It feels like meeting someone who speaks a dialect you half understand.\n","tags":["Angular","AngularJS","Java","Spring Boot","Laravel","PHP","Migration","Backend"],"title":"From Laravel and AngularJS to Spring Boot and Angular: A Full-Stack Migration Field Report"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2017-02-09T02:42:21Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2017/02/09/test-gnome-ubuntu-and-back-alive-lightdm-gdm/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"How it started A few days ago I just decided to give my Ubuntu a new look and experience.\nI thought KDE is not in a good situation and maybe Gnome 3 is a better option than Unity.\nThe easiest option to try Gnome on Ubuntu (Without a clean install of OS) is to install it as a package:\n1 sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop During the install process it asks for Display Manager, you have options to choose, gdm and lightdm, since I want to try Gnome, I select gdm:\n","tags":["gdm","lightdm","Ubuntu","gnome"],"title":"Test Gnome on Ubuntu and Rescue Back"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2017-01-18T10:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2017/01/18/six-months-with-angular-2-after-years-of-angularjs/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"Angular 2.0 shipped in September. We are on 2.4 now, and the release train is already moving — Angular 4 is being talked about openly. I have been building with it since October, migrating a medium-sized internal dashboard that lived in AngularJS for three years. This is not a tutorial and not a verdict. It is a field report from someone who still dreams in $scope sometimes.\nThe context nobody warns you about If you spent years on AngularJS, you did not “upgrade.” You rewrote. Google offers ngUpgrade to run both frameworks side by side, and we tried it for two weeks before giving up. Our app had too many directives, too much implicit magic, and too many $watches buried in places nobody remembered. We picked a greenfield module, scaffolded it with the CLI, and started porting feature by feature.\n","tags":["Angular","AngularJS","TypeScript","Migration","Frontend"],"title":"Six Months with Angular 2 After Years of AngularJS"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2016-08-18T18:22:01Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2016/08/18/oi/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Ace is the eighteenth studio album by German band Scooter released on 5 February 2016 through Sheffield Tunes \u0026 Kontor Records, preceded by the first single “Riot” on 4 September 2015, second single “Oi” was released on 5 February 2016, and the third single “Mary Got No Lamb” which was released on 6 May 2016.\nOi, oi, oi, fucking oi\nOi, oi, oi, fucking oi\nOi, oi, oi, fucking oi\nOi, oi, oi, fucking oi\nOi, oi, oi, fucking oi\nOi, oi, oi, fucking oi\nEverywhere I go all the ladies wanna touch me\nAnd when I’m on the road, I’m always spot by paparazzi\nDid it for the fame but always did it for the joy\n‘Cause everywhere I go they scream ‘oi, fucking oi’\nAll around the world you see my face on TV\nAnd all around the world they want to be like H.P.\nI never played the game, always been the bad boy\nAnd everywhere I go they scream ‘oi, fucking oi’\nYeah\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"oi!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2016-02-12T20:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2016/02/12/laravel-from-old-school-developer-eyes/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"I started my programming life in a different world.\nBack then, Visual Basic 5 and 6 felt like magic. You could drag a button onto a form, double-click it, write a few lines of code, and suddenly you had a working Windows application. You did not start by arguing about architecture. You started by making something useful appear on the screen.\nLater came AutoIt, classic ASP, small server-side scripts, admin tools, automation helpers, and a lot of “just make it work” programming. Some of it was ugly. Some of it was clever. A lot of it lived longer than expected.\n","tags":["Laravel","PHP","Web Development","Developer Experience"],"title":"Laravel, From the Eyes of an Old-School Developer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2015-10-09T16:25:13Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2015/10/09/all-the-worlds-a-stagefright/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Here’s how security vulnerabilities are supposed to be handled. One, a researcher discovers an issue. Two, the people who make the software find a solution. And three, the solution is then made available, ideally by automatic update. That’s what Windows does, and what Apple does. It isn’t always as fast as it should be, but at least once the fix exists it’s available almost instantly.\nHere’s how it works with Android.\n","tags":["Android","Stagefright","Vulnerability","Google"],"title":"All the world's a Stagefright"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2015-08-05T22:12:45Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2015/08/05/taylor-swifts-vanity-fair-photoshoot-2015/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"PHOTOS: Taylor Swift, Photographed by Mario Testino Released on VF: vanityfair.com\n“I think I know how to put together a good outfit,” says Swift. “But any day you’re going to admit to being a style icon is a day you need to look in the mirror and really check yourself.”\nTaylor Swift relaxes at the Beaufort Bar, in the Savoy hotel, on the eve of her concert in London’s Hyde Park.\n","tags":["photoshoot","Music"],"title":"Taylor Swift's Vanity Fair PhotoShoot 2015"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2015-06-07T05:51:17Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2015/06/07/taylor-swift-notches-six-months-at-no-1-on-billboard-artist-100/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"from Taylor Swift Universe\nTaylor Swift makes it an even six months at No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100 (dated June 6), as she rules the list for a 26th week, bolstered by the coronation of her new single, “Bad Blood,” on the Billboard Hot 100.\nThe Artist 100 is the first weekly survey dedicated to measuring artist activity across Billboard’s most influential charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, Top Album Sales and the Social 50. The Artist 100 blends data measuring album and track sales, radio airplay, streaming and social media fan interaction to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.\n","tags":["Billboard","Music"],"title":"Taylor Swift Notches Six Months at No. 1 on Billboard Artist 100"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2015-06-05T15:12:10Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2015/06/05/facebook-farewells-flaky-sha-1/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Facebook has set the date: on September 30, the ancient and creaking SHA-1 hashing algorithm will make its tumbril trip and get the chop.\nSHA-1, designed by the NSA in 1995, is a one-way algorithm: a block of data is turned into a message digest. The digest can’t be turned back into the original message, but serves as a digital signature confirming the authenticity of (for example) the software you’ve downloaded.\n","tags":["Facebook","SSL","Update"],"title":"Facebook farewells flaky SHA-1"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2015-01-11T19:41:23Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2015/01/11/new-computer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Happy New Computer (To me!)\nFinally it was time to get a new computer as the old one was not working any longer for my needs and about a month ago passed away with a broken Graphic Card.\nAfter saving a few $$$ and considering my budget I got a good balance of power-computer and price.\nHere is configuration of my new computer (Click on images to see full size):\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"New Computer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2014-09-25T22:10:46Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/09/25/need-know-berserk-mozilla/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Intel Security Advanced Threat Research Team has discovered a critical signature forgery vulnerability in the Mozilla Network Security Services (NSS) crypto library that could allow malicious parties to set up fraudulent sites masquerading as legitimate businesses and other organizations.\nThe Mozilla NSS library, commonly utilized in the Firefox web browser, can also be found in Thunderbird, Seamonkey, and other Mozilla products. Dubbed “BERserk”, this vulnerability allows for attackers to forge RSA signatures, thereby allowing for the bypass of authentication to websites utilizing SSL/TLS. Given that certificates can be forged for any domain, this issue raises serious concerns around integrity and confidentiality as we traverse what we perceive to be secure websites.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","hack","Mozilla","nss","Security","Updates"],"title":"What you need to know about BERserk and Mozilla"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2014-08-22T17:35:36Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/08/22/symantec-overhaul-norton-security-line/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Symantec is overhauling its Norton security software, going from nine products to just one as the company turns its attention to smartphones and connected devices.\nThe new product, called Norton Security, doubles down on the company’s renewed focus on subscription models. In its most recent quarter, when Symantec reported a $236 million profit on a 2% gain in revenue to $1.74 billion, the company said it planned to optimize the Norton business while streamlining product support.\n","tags":["Symantec"],"title":"Symantec to Overhaul Its Norton Security Line"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2014-08-22T17:03:30Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/08/22/new-facebook-scams-2014/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"So many Facebook scams in 2014 have been a little worrying even though at first they all seem innocent enough, but these are social scams to lure users in to gain money or access to computers.\nOne particular Facebook scam this year was the “Robin Williams goodbye video”, which was apparently made before his death. This fake BBC News video is a scam and no such video exists.\nThe “Robin Williams goodbye video” started to circulate on Facebook and asks users to share the video before they can watch it, DO NOT click on it. There is no video so no point on sharing it, Symantec explains in detail that when Facebook users click on the video it asks them to either fill out a survey or install an application. When the survey is complete the scammers gain money for each one completed.\n","tags":["Facebook","scam","Security"],"title":"New Facebook scams in 2014"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2014-02-13T23:41:32Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/02/13/happy-valentines-day/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Happy Valentine’s Day\n","tags":["valentine","events"],"title":"Happy Valentine's Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2014-02-10T23:31:34Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/02/10/nbcs-russian-hack-actually-happened-according-security-expert-set/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" A couple days ago, NBC News ran a report pegged to the Sochi Olympics about Russian hacking. In it, correspondent Richard Engel uses a “brand new” smartphone to test out the Russian internet while hanging out in a Moscow cafe. “Almost immediately,” he says in the segment, “we were hacked.” Naturally, as the security consultant NBC hired for the segment explained today, it’s not true.\n","tags":["sochi","News"],"title":"How NBC's Russian Hack Actually Happened, According to the Security Expert Who Set It Up"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2014-02-07T23:53:22Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/02/07/gates-spends-entire-first-day-back-office-trying-install-windows-8-1/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" REDMOND, WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Bill Gates’s first day at work in the newly created role of technology adviser got off to a rocky start yesterday as the Microsoft founder struggled for hours to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade.\nThe installation hit a snag early on, sources said, when Mr. Gates repeatedly received an error message informing him that his PC ran into a problem that it could not handle and needed to restart.\n","tags":["Microsoft","bill gates","Windows","Windows 8"],"title":"Gates spends entire first day back in office trying to install Windows 8.1"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2014-02-07T22:45:03Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2014/02/07/fbi-willing-pay-top-dollar-download-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Federal Bureau of Investigation is willing to pay top dollar for the malicious, infectious software the rest of us pay to keep out of our computers, according to the Federal Business Opportunities website.\nA Monday price quote request by the Investigative Analysis Unit of the agency’s Operational Technology Division is asking computer security developers and retailers to help the agency build a library of malware for an undisclosed reason, letting the companies name their price.\n","tags":["FBI","News","Malware","Security"],"title":"The FBI is willing to pay top dollar to download some malware"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-07-11T21:43:58Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/07/11/victim-of-ritual/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The “Victim Of Ritual” music video from the new album “Colours In The Dark” by Tarja Turunen is now visible worldwide\nDownload the single \u0026 video via iTunes: http://smarturl.it/Tarja_VOR\nClick here to pre-order the new album “Colours In The Dark”: http://www.tarja-coloursinthedark.com/\n","tags":["Music Video","Music","Tarja Turunen"],"title":"Victim Of Ritual"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-07-11T13:50:04Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/07/11/avira-starts-blocking-some-browsers-and-email-clients/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Since yesterday, some Avira Internet Security users have only been able to use their web browsers if they first disable Avira Web Protection. According to Avira, some customers are getting a “data structure error” that requires a complete uninstall and fresh installation of the program.\nHowever, users in the Avira forum are saying that reinstalling does not solve all their problems: activating IPv6 support and the Drive-by protection causes new browsing issues – this appears to be a Java-related problem, particularly if the latest version, Java 7, is installed. Disabling browser protection is the only way to get around the problem. Chrome, Opera, Firefox and the Thunderbird email client are all affected. Avira has acknowledged that there is an issue with Avira Web Protection and the recently released Chrome version 28; the problem is currently being investigated.\n","tags":["Avira"],"title":"Avira starts blocking some browsers and email clients"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-07-10T13:31:59Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/07/10/chrome-28-with-new-blink-engine-and-rich-notifications/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-posted from H-Online:\nGoogle has released the stable version 28 of its Chrome browser. It is the first version to use the new Blink engine for rendering web pages and it appears that the new engine will allow web pages to be loaded about ten per cent faster. The developers say that the increased speed is also thanks to the new threaded HTML parser, which frees up the JavaScript thread, allowing DOM content to be displayed faster. The HTML parser also takes fewer breaks, which is said to result in time savings of up to 40 per cent. Another contributor to the faster working speed is the optimized V8 JavaScript engine.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 28 with new Blink engine and Rich Notifications"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-07-04T17:47:29Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/07/04/happy-birthday-america/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Happy 4th of july, Let’s celebrate USA’s 237th birthday!\n","tags":["Events"],"title":"Happy Birthday America"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-06-27T22:50:25Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/06/27/what-i-have-and-am-busy-with/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey Folks\nMaybe you have noticed that I’ve been less active here in my forum and there are some reasons for that!\nOver last 2 months (or maybe 3) I’ve been busy with several stuff and on top of them with my website, so here is what I’ve done so far or what I am going to do:\nI got my own hosting. [Done] Moved my website from Google Sites to my own hosting. [In Progress – some pages are left to move, some out-dated content] Moved TechBlog from Blogger to my own hosting. [Done] Moved LifeBlog (yeah, you are reading it now!) from Blogger to my own hosting. [Done] Moved EntBlog from WordPress to my own hosting and started posting again after years. [Done] Moved Forum to my own hosting. [In Progress – needs a new look, need to link accounts with QnA] Started QnA. [In Progress – needs a new look, need to link accounts with forum] Started Support Center with Email Piping support. [Done] Translating the site into Persian [My native language]. [In Progress – 150 pages are left] Translating the site into German. [To-do] It is not easy to move from one to another platform without losing contents to without breaking links, so I had to do so much coding and writing lots of custom scripts to extract old contents and import them into new platforms. Also even though I’m done moving blogs or sites or starting the new systems, still there are a lot of under-the-hood changes and works that should be done. e.g. Forum needs a new look to match the new site theme, QnA too, oh, and since I’m hosting the blogs and site etc myself, I need to make sure my sites are secure, stable and fast and those maintenance needs time too. And I don’t have a team, so working on all of these stuff needs time.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"What I have, and am busy with"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-06-26T09:26:18Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/06/26/firefox-22-enables-webrtc-makes-social-apis-easier-to-manage/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews: Mozilla has released Firefox 22.0 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux. The update includes some platform-specific improvements — Firefox following display scaling options in Windows, and providing download progress indicators in its dock application icon in OS X — plus a number of other tweaks and improvements.\nOther new features include the ability for users to now manage their social API plug-ins via the Add-ons menu (select Services in the left-hand menu to do so), while users can now adjust the playback rate of HTML5 audio and video files (right-click the playback screen and choose Play Speed to do so).\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Firefox","Mozilla","social networks"],"title":"Firefox 22 enables WebRTC, makes social APIs easier to manage"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-06-25T10:57:44Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/06/25/wordpress-hardened-with-xss-dos-and-ssrf-fixes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" With the second security and maintenance release of WordPress 3.5, the developers of the popular open source blogging software have closed 12 bugs, seven of them security issues. In their announcement, the developers “strongly encourage” all users to update all their installations of the software to version 3.5.2 immediately. In addition to the fixed vulnerabilities, the new release also includes some proactive changes intended to harden the platform against attacks.\n","tags":["News","Security","Updates","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress hardened with XSS, DoS and SSRF fixes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-06-24T20:13:57Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/06/24/iphone-notifications-to-google-glass/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google has already released a MyGlass Companion app for Android via the Play Store, and although a corresponding iOS version has yet to manifest itself in the App Store, the company has already noted that iPhone users will not be neglected when it comes to the early 2014 public launch of Google Glass. In the meantime, the PostOffice tweak will work just fine for those with a jail-broken iPhone, and although there’s not much to it aside from one or two settings, it does what it purports to do in pushing notifications through Glass. The free tweak is available via the BigBoss repository in Cydia, To configure the way your notifications are re-routed to Glass you navigate to your native Settings and configure the way your notifications are re-routed. Google Glass currently may only be in the hands of creative individuals, some competition winners and a handful of developers, but that has not prevented the tech world from getting itself excited about the internet giant’s technological headgear. Last month, one such creative individual, Adam Bell, had managed to route iOS notifications through to Google Glass using some kit he has thrown together, and now a tweak has emerged offering a simpler way for such a process to be achieved.\n","tags":["Apple","Google"],"title":"iPhone Notifications to Google Glass"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-06-19T09:41:51Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/06/19/symantec-updates-norton-2013-range-to-v20-4/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Symantec has updated its suite of Windows security products with the release of Norton Antivirus 2013 v20.4, Norton Internet Security 2013 v20.4 and Norton 360 2013 v20.4. Version 20.4 is primarily a bug-fix release, with some notable fixes, but also tweaks the user interface.\nOne visible change for users who also have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free installed as additional protection is a fix that prevents Norton from blocking or flagging up MBAM as incompatible.\n","tags":["malwarebytes","norton","Symantec","Updates"],"title":"Symantec updates Norton 2013 range to v20.4"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-06-06T08:43:10Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/06/06/facebook-virus-that-drains-your-bank-accounts-what-you-need-to-know/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"This post has been shared originally by Malwarebytes Blog:\nThe word about the Zeus Trojan back on Facebook has spread as fast as the malware itself across many news sites.\nAwareness and education about online dangers is essential but headlines like “Malware That Drains Your Bank Account Thriving On Facebook” instill fear while at the same time blame Facebook — something that may not be entirely justified.\nMalicious links on social networking sites are nothing new (Twitter, Linkedin to name a few). They have been, and continue to be, abused by spammers to peddle fake AV or redirect to exploit sites distributing all sorts of nasties.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Zeus","Security"],"title":"Facebook Virus That Drains Your Bank Accounts: What You Need to Know"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-31T13:12:47Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/31/google-cuts-grace-period-for-vendors-of-vulnerable-software/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google is shortening the amount of time it gives to makers of vulnerable software and web services if there is imminent danger. The Google security team say that if they encounter a zero-day issue that is already being actively used for cyber attacks, it will grant the affected manufacturer just seven days grace to fix the vulnerabilities or publish an advisory with mitigation strategies for users.\nAfter seven days, Google wants to publish details of the vulnerability in such a way that users of the vulnerable software can protect themselves from attacks. Previously, the company had given vendors sixty days before it went public with details of vulnerabilities. Google says, though, that it has found zero-day vulnerabilities being used to target a limited subset of people and this targeting makes the attack more serious than a widespread attack and more important to resolve quickly, especially where political activists are being compromised and the attacks can have “real safety implications” in some parts of the world.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google cuts grace period for vendors of vulnerable software"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-30T15:04:25Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/30/google-overhauls-gmail-to-take-on-e-mail-overload/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" NYTimes posted: On Wednesday, Google introduced a new in-box design for its e-mail service, Gmail.\nIn a blog post announcing the new design, the company said it wanted to help people quickly sort through their messages to determine which ones were important and which ones could wait until later.\nThe revamped Gmail automatically sorts incoming messages into categories, which appear as three tabs — primary, social and promotions — that users can toggle between in their in-box. The primary tab contains the e-mails that the service thinks are most important. Social contains message updates from various social networks, like LinkedIn, Tumblr and Yelp. Promotions contains newsletters, party invites and concert announcements. Users can also select to add additional tabs to help manage electronic bills, banking statements and messages from forum boards.\n","tags":["Announcement","Email","Google","Gmail"],"title":"Google Overhauls Gmail to Take On E-Mail Overload"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-29T11:44:46Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/29/dmc-and-wayne-static-join-forces-to-shoot-video-for-new-track/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Wayne Static shared this in his facebook page:\nDMC And Wayne Static of Static-X Join Forces To Shoot Video For New Track “Noise Revolution”\nDMC of the legendary RUN-DMC and Wayne Static will be shooting a video for a new track entitled “Noise Revolution” in the coming weeks. DMC, one of the pioneers of Hip Hop music is also credited as being the first to blend rock with rap most notably with a RUN-DMC rendition of “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith which also featured vocals by Steven Tyler. Once again DMC looks to break new ground by synthesizing the industrial sound of Wayne Static’s undeniable vocal approach with his trail blazing rap style. The video will be directed by Matt Zane (Wayne Static, Zakk Wylde, Orgy, Society 1, Annihilated)\n","tags":["DMC","Music"],"title":"DMC And Wayne Static Join Forces To Shoot Video For New Track"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-26T19:50:30Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/26/iranian-hackers-targeting-us-oil-gas-and-electric-companies/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Hacker News reported: For all the talk about China and the Syrian Electronic Army, it seems there’s another threat to U.S. cyber interests i.e. Iran. Series of potentially destructive computer attacks that have been targeting American oil, gas and electricity companies tracked back to Iran.\nIranian hackers were able to gain access to control-system software that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines. Malware have been found in the power grid that could be used to deliver malicious software to damage plants. The targets have included several American oil, gas and electricity companies, which government officials have refused to identify.\n","tags":["hack","News","Iranian Hackers","report","Security"],"title":"Iranian Hackers targeting US oil, gas, and electric companies"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-23T20:01:51Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/23/apple-closes-quicktime-vulnerabilities-on-windows/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Apple has released a security update for its QuickTime media framework for Windows. Version 7.7.4 of the software closes 12 critical security holes causing memory corruption and buffer overflows when processing a number of media formats. The vulnerabilities affect Windows 7, Vista and XP SP2 or later and could be exploited to cause arbitrary code execution and application crashes.\nThe vulnerabilities affected the playback of MP3, H.263, H.264, TeXML, JPEG, QTIF, Sorenson Video and FPX files as well as the handling of dref, enof and mvhd atoms within the program. All of the problems were reported by researchers working with HP’s Zero Day Initiative, five of them by Tom Gallagher and Paul Bates from Microsoft.\n","tags":["Apple","Security","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Apple closes QuickTime vulnerabilities on Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-23T19:48:44Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/23/symantec-planning-to-discontinue-pc-tools-security-products/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Symantec has stopped selling the security-related products in its PC Tools portfolio, according to an announcement on the company’s web site. Customers using the affected programs – Spyware Doctor, Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus, and Internet Security – can continue to use them until their subscription runs out.\nSymantec says that the decision is related to consolidating its product range in order to offer customers fewer but higher quality products. To that end, the company suggests that customers looking to replace the discontinued products consider Norton Internet Security.\n","tags":["Discontinue","pc tools","symantec"],"title":"Symantec planning to discontinue PC Tools security products"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-23T07:14:53Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/23/korn-on-mission-to-find-cure-for-diabetes/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" bakersfieldcalifornian.com posted:\nThe members of Grammy-winning hometown heroes Korn will be preparing to head overseas for the European leg of their current concert tour when the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation holds a wine and food event in Bakersfield June 1.\nBut they will be there in spirit and, better yet, a piece of history that has huge significance to any Korn fan will go home with the highest bidder: the guitar played by Brian Welch at the recent concert marking his return to the band after an absence of eight years.\n","tags":["Korn","Music"],"title":"Korn on mission to find cure for diabetes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-22T20:15:15Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/22/chrome-27-comes-with-better-load-speeds-and-security-fixes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Chrome developers at Google have released version 27 of their browser to the Stable release channel for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer. The new version, Chrome 27.0.1453.93, includes performance improvements with a new scheduler and fixes a number of security vulnerabilities – most of them rated as High – that Google’s bug bounty program rewarded with almost $15,000 in total.\nChrome 27 also introduces a filesystem API that allows the browser to synchronise application data through the Google Drive service. Among the bug fixes, a dependency problem which stopped Chrome being easily installed on Ubuntu 13.04 has also been fixed, one release earlier than Canonical was expecting.\n","tags":["Google"],"title":"Chrome 27 comes with better load speeds and security fixes"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-18T18:36:16Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/18/tarjas-new-promo-photos-for-colours-in-the-dark/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"New promo photos by Eugenio Mazzinghi for upcoming album Colours In The Dark\n","tags":["Tarja Turunen","Music"],"title":"Tarja's new promo photos for Colours In The Dark"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-13T18:57:08Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/13/microsoft-warns-of-facebook-hijacking-extensions/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Malicious browser extensions are trying to hijack Facebook profiles, according to a warning from Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center. The extensions, first discovered in Brazil and dubbed JS/Febipos.A by Microsoft, are targeted at Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and appear to be installed by a custom trojan dropper. Microsoft first reported on the trojans in April, but it seems that a recent update to the trojans warrants bringing further attention to them.\nThe trojan extensions themselves monitor users’ browser activity to see if they are logged into Facebook and then retrieve a configuration file from a site, disguised as a .php file, which contains commands for the extension. The extension is able to like pages, share pages, post, join groups, invite friends to groups, chat to friends or comment on posts. The Microsoft researchers have witnessed the extension posting messages (in Portuguese) about teen suicides with a video link that sends users to a malicious site, liking and commenting on a Facebook page apparently belonging to a car company, and sending out a variety of messages via chat, posts or comments. Links to other Facebook profiles are also posted by the extension in messages.\n","tags":["Microsoft"],"title":"Microsoft warns of Facebook-hijacking extensions"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-13T18:40:16Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/13/name-com-domain-registrar-hacked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" US domain registrar and web hosting service Name.com has fallen victim to a hacker attack. In a recent email, the company informed its customers of an incident that potentially enabled unknown attackers to gain access to “email addresses, encrypted passwords and encrypted credit card details”. The registrar says that the private crypto keys that are required to decrypt the stolen credit card details are stored on a separate system that wasn’t compromised.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Name.com domain registrar hacked"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-10T23:08:35Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/10/slayer-star-jeff-hanneman-died-of-alcohol-related-liver-scarring/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Jeff Hanneman of Slayer performing at Sonisphere Festival, Knebworth in August 2010.\n(Reuters) – Guitarist Jeff Hanneman of the seminal heavy metal band Slayer died of alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, and not as a result of a flesh-eating bacteria, the remaining members of the U.S. band said.\nHanneman, a founder of the band, which was known for its fast tempo, dark themes and pounding drums, died last week at age 49 in Southern California after suffering liver failure.\n","tags":["Slayer","Music"],"title":"Slayer star Jeff Hanneman died of alcohol-related liver scarring"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-09T18:34:28Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/09/artistdirect-interviews-korn-about-their-forthcoming-eleventh-studio-album/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ARTISTdirect sits down with James “Munky” Shaffer, Brian “Head” Welch, Reggie “Fieldy” Arvizu, and Ray Luzier for Korn’s very first interview together about their forthcoming eleventh studio album, the upcoming tour, and so much more…\nRead the interview: http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/exclusive-munky-head-fieldy-and-ray-talk-korn-s-best-album-reunion-tour-and-more/10543989#MSkaRhKOmY7RAEtI.99\n","tags":["Korn","Music"],"title":"ARTISTdirect Interviews Korn about their forthcoming eleventh studio album"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-09T12:53:20Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/09/tarja-turunens-new-album-colours-in-the-dark/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We have been waiting for it, Tarja will be releasing a new album August 2013, the new album is called “Colours In The Dark”, She explain the album title:\nAs the title already clearly points out, you can expect a dark album, but filled with colours.\nCurrent song listing is:\nNever Enough Into The Sun Medusa Lucid Dreamer Neverlight Until Silence Deliverance Later she says:\nAnd for the third time the album title comes from a line of one of the songs.\n","tags":["Tarja Turunen","Music"],"title":"Tarja Turunen's new album `Colours In The Dark`"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-05-06T15:30:02Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/06/internet-explorer-8-0-day-update-cve-2013-1347/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft has confirmed a bug in Internet Explorer 8, CVE-2013-1347, which exposes user machines to remote code execution.\nIn an advisory, Microsoft says the vulnerability “exists in the way that Internet Explorer [accesses] an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated.”\nThat, in turn, opens the door to memory corruption and remote code execution in the current user context.\nAccording to this blog post by Eric Roman: “A use-after-free condition occurs when a CGenericElement object is freed, but a reference is kept on the document and used again during rendering, an invalid memory that’s controllable is used, and allows arbitrary code execution under the context of the user.”\n","tags":["0-Day","Browsers","Internet Explorer","Microsoft"],"title":"Internet Explorer 8 0-Day Update CVE-2013-1347"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-03T20:31:34Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/03/taylor-swift-needs-your-support/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Taylor is a finalist for the Billboard Milestone Award and you can help her take it home! Vote everyday until May 19th. Oh, and fun fact – you can vote multiple times a day! www.billboard.com/milestone\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Taylor Swift needs your support"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-05-03T14:23:35Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/05/03/korn-band-members-get-back-together/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Head, Munky, JD, Fieldy, and Ray are not only together again on-stage for shows beginning May 15, but Korn is also in the studio recording a new album!\n“We knew we would have a blast playing together, ‘cause we love each other so much… everything just started pouring out, now I can’t wait until our fans hear this stuff!!” Brian “Head” Welch tells Rolling Stone.\nWatch the album trailer on RollingStone.com:\nhttps://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/korn-enter-the-studio-for-new-album-241502/\n","tags":["Korn","Music"],"title":"Korn band members get back together"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-25T19:39:43Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/25/ubuntu-13-04-raring-ringtail-is-out-whats-new/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Canonical has released Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail, most likely the last release of Ubuntu that will primarily cater for laptop and desktop users. For Ubuntu 13.04, Canonical focused on tightening up the core of the OS and polishing the Unity interface in preparation for Ubuntu’s smartphone and tablet debut, which is slated to occur in October with the release of version 13.10. There’s also the usual slew of package updates, a new Linux kernel, and a couple of new features, too.\n","tags":["Announcement","Ubuntu","Updates","News"],"title":"Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail is out, What's new?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-25T18:42:01Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/25/symantec-vs-av-comparatives-which-one-do-you-trust/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-posted from PCMag SecurityWatch:\nLast week independent antivirus lab AV-Comparatives released the results of an on-demand antivirus detection test. The fact that Microsoft came in near the bottom wasn’t big news; the fact that Symantec scored even lower was surprising indeed. In a blog post released today, Symantec decried the entire practice of performing on-demand malware scanning tests, calling it “misleading.”\nIn the early years of antivirus testing, every test was an on-demand scanning test. Researchers would assemble a collection of known malware, run a full scan, and record the percentage of samples detected. Modern labs work hard to devise tests that more closely reflect a user’s real-world experience, taking into account the fact that the vast majority of infections enter the computer from the Internet. Symantec contends that only the real-world sort of test is valid; I don’t entirely agree.\n","tags":["Security","Benchmark","News"],"title":"Symantec vs AV-Comparatives, Which one do you trust?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-24T12:56:13Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/24/microsoft-patches-the-security-update-2823324/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft is making another attempt to close the privilege elevation hole in the NTFS filesystem’s kernel driver for Windows 7 and Server 2008, including R2. The new patch, 2840149, supersedes security update 2823324, which Microsoft released on its April Patch Tuesday.\nHowever, shortly after releasing it, the software giant had to recall the first update because it caused problems with various third-party programs; it crippled computers and triggered error messages. Kaspersky’s anti-virus programs also started acting up once the update was installed, erroneously assuming that they no longer had a valid licence and discontinuing operation. When re-releasing the update, Microsoft didn’t clarify whether this was the reason for the system malfunctioning.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates"],"title":"Microsoft patches the security update 2823324"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-23T20:43:59Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/23/china-accounts-for-41-percent-of-global-computer-attack-traffic/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" A new security report points the finger at China as the main source of malicious computer attacks — and puts the United States in second.\nIn a report due to be released today by Akamai Technologies, the security firm says that the Asian country is accountable for 41 percent of all global computer-attack traffic. As reported by Bloomberg, the latest statistic suggests that cyberattacks from China have risen over three times from last year. In addition, there has been a 33 percent hike from the last quarter.\n","tags":["China"],"title":"China accounts for 41 percent of global computer attack traffic"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-23T20:23:35Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/23/new-java-security-hole-affects-desktops-and-servers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adam Gowdiak, who has made a name for himself by finding flaws in Java, has reported a new vulnerability. Security issue 61, according to Gowdiak’s tally, affects current versions of Java SE 7, including the very latest release version 1.7.0_21-b11.\nThe hole is once again present in the Reflection API and allows attackers to completely bypass the language’s sandbox to access the underlying system. Gowdiak has not published any further details about the vulnerability in order to give Oracle time to patch the problem. This means that there are now three vulnerabilities discovered by Gowdiak that still require fixes: problems 54, 56 and 61 as numbered by him.\n","tags":["Java","Oracle","Security Hole"],"title":"New Java security hole affects desktops and servers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-21T14:25:44Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/21/facebook-closes-cross-site-scripting-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Code could be injected through (fake) custom locations\nFacebook has closed various cross-site scripting (XSS) holes that were discovered by security firm Break Security and which have now been described in greater detail. Break Security’s CEO, Nir Goldshlager, explains that the social network was vulnerable to attacks through its Chat feature as well as its “Check in” and Messenger for Windows components.\nIn the Chat window, for example, attackers were able to share links that weren’t adequately checked by Facebook. This enabled attackers to add disguised JavaScript commands to links that were then automatically inserted into href parameters by the Chat client. When users clicked on these specially crafted messages, the injected code was executed on their systems.\n","tags":["Facebook","XSS"],"title":"Facebook closes cross-site scripting holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-20T19:47:19Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/20/lulzsec-hacker-gets-a-year-for-sony-hack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" A former LulzSec hacker has been jailed for a year for ransacking Sony Pictures Entertainment’s computer systems.\nCody Kretsinger, 25, from Decatur, Illinois – better known to his fellow LulzSec cohorts as “Recursion” – was also ordered to carry out 1,000 hours of community service, and a year of home detention, following his release from prison.\nHe was sentenced by a Los Angeles court on Thursday, Reuters reports.\nKretsinger had pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer (i.e. computer hacking) in a plea-bargaining agreement. Kretsinger admitting breaking into the Sony Pictures website and extracting information which he passed on to other members of LulzSec, who leaked the data in order to embarrass Sony, a hated enemy of the hacktivist group.\n","tags":["hack","Hollywood","LulzSec","Sony","Security"],"title":"LulzSec Hacker Gets A Year For Sony Hack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-20T18:29:01Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/20/java-8-release-schedule-delayed-for-renewed-focus-on-security/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" ISC Handler Rob V pointed out a blog post from Oracle’s Mark Reinhold stating that Oracle has “mounted an intense effort to address those issues in a series of critical-patch update releases” and that they’ve also upgraded their “development processes to increase the level of scrutiny applied to new code, so that new code doesn’t introduce new vulnerabilities.”\nFraming statements state that Oracle:\nis committed to continue fixing security issues at an accelerated pace will enhance the Java security model will introduce new security features recoginizes that more engineer hours are required than can be freed up by dropping features from Java 8 or otherwise reducing the scope of the release at this stage As such, the likely release of Java 8 will be in the first quarter of 2014 (had been intended for September 2013).\n","tags":["Java","Oracle","Updates"],"title":"Java 8 release schedule delayed for renewed focus on security"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-17T21:52:42Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/17/boston-marathon-bombing-links-may-hide-java-based-exploits/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" PCMag: My social media accounts and email inbox are full of links to stories about the horrific incident in Boston earlier this week. I am reading about the victims, the bystanders and first responders that rushed to help, and looking for updates on the investigation.\nIt turns out I should be careful about what links I click on, as cyber-criminals have already started exploiting the tragedy for their own nefarious purposes, security experts told SecurityWatch.\n","tags":["exploit","Malware","News","Security"],"title":"Boston Marathon Bombing Links May Hide Java-Based Exploits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-04-05T20:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/04/05/microsoft-to-plug-holes-in-windows-defender-in-patch-tuesday/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday on 9 April will be an important spring cleaning day; the company plans to implement nine security bulletins. One of the bulletins deals with vulnerabilities in Windows Defender for Windows 8 and RT; the hole is rated as important and can be exploited to achieve elevated privileges.\nThe headline bulletins will be the two critical security holes, one of which affects all versions of Windows and Windows Server, and another critical vulnerability which can be found in all versions of Internet Explorer. Whether the Internet Explorer fix will be addressing the IE vulnerability revealed at the recent Pwn2Own contest is unclear though. Both critical holes allow for remote code execution.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Windows Defender","Security"],"title":"Microsoft to plug holes in Windows Defender in Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-31T10:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/31/russian-malware-spies-on-us-atms/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Security firm Group-IB has identified a malware program called Dump Memory Grabber that can take debit and credit card data from point-of-sale (POS) terminals and ATMs. The researchers say that the program has already been used to steal data from clients of US banks including Chase, Capital One, Citibank, and Union Bank N.A. as well as from clients with Nordstrom-branded cards.\nSecurityWeek reports the author of Dump Memory Grabber has put a video online to teach other hackers how it works. The Windows program written in C++ reads the target system’s memory using an external tool called mmon.exe.\n","tags":["Malware","News","Russia","US","Security"],"title":"Russian malware spies on US ATMs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-29T00:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/29/backdoor-uses-evernote-as-command-and-control-server/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" With its rich functionality and accessibility, Evernote is a popular note-taking tool for its many users. Unfortunately, it may also provide the perfect cover for cybercriminals’ tracks.\nWe recently uncovered a malware that appears to be using Evernote as a communication and control (C\u0026C) server. The malware attempts to connect to Evernote via https://evernote.com/intl/zh-cn, which is a legitimate URL.\nThe sample we gathered consists of an executable file, which drops a .DLL file and injects it into a legitimate process. The said .DLL file performs the actual backdoor routines.\n","tags":["analyze","Evernote","Malware","Security"],"title":"Backdoor Uses Evernote as Command-and-Control Server"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-28T17:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/28/turkish-flashplayer-no-its-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" I recently came across the file “FlashPlayer.exe” during the course of regular research.\nThe file had been distributed with the file name FlashPlayer.exe and not surprisingly, when executed, it shows the following GUI, partly written in Turkish:\nObviously, it’s disguised as an Adobe Flash Player 11 installer.\nHere is more info about the file:\n1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 File Name: FlashPlayer.exe MD5: e2856b1ad6c74c51767cab05bdedc5d1 SHA1: 1ac150ddb964722b6b7c96808763b3e4d0472daf CRC32: a8464606 SHA-256: b5f37cc44365a5a1b240e649ea07bbb17959ceddc3f8b67a793df694a6f03a88 SHA-512: e2d1388bd5feec51227cfa10a5606f7d3bc58f12ea95d688acb5178ff31a156a1092f739e7dd276f4c5368d89c33ed6a15b08ff5df294b9c3647905c1083921d SHA-384: 5d622afcf87e33334a446df5dfd2be7769cab596cc9a121bfd6269bc85ee980f75e1a2d1472f0eb379788845230d883b File Size: 561,152 Version: 2.01 Source: hxxps://flash-player-download.com/FlashPlayer.exe VirusTotal: Latest Report\n","tags":["analyze","link","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Turkish FlashPlayer? no! It’s malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-26T19:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/26/irs-uncorks-dirty-dozen-tax-scams-for-2013/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":" The Internal Revenue Service today reminded taxpayers that there are plenty of scam artists and cybercriminals that want your money.\nThe tax collection agency issued its “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams that it says peak at this time of year and include:\nIdentity theft Tax fraud through the use of identity theft tops this year’s Dirty Dozen list. Identity theft occurs when someone uses personal information such as your name, Social Security number (SSN) or other identifying information, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. In many cases, an identity thief uses a legitimate taxpayer’s identity to fraudulently file a tax return and claim a refund, the IRS said.\n","tags":["Scams","Security"],"title":"IRS uncorks Dirty Dozen Tax Scams for 2013"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-25T10:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/25/anonymous-linked-groups-hack-israeli-websites-release-personal-data/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" An anti-Israel hacking collective affiliated with Anonymous says it has initiated a widespread cyber attack against the Jewish state, penetrating websites affiliated with the Mossad security service and a slew of related entities.\nThe hackers claimed late Friday that they have obtained and released personal information relating to 35,000 Israeli government officials, including politicians, military leaders, and police officers, according to a Twitter feed associated with the hackers.\nA comprehensive spreadsheet purporting to include the information of all 35,000 Israeli officials was published by the website Cryptome, though it did not independently verify the information.\n","tags":["Anonymous","Hack","Security"],"title":"Anonymous-linked groups hack Israeli websites, release personal data"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-25T10:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/25/emma-stones-twitter-hacked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" 3/22/2013: Emma Stone revealed that she was not behind the ambiguous tweets concerning boyfriend Andrew Garfield and co-star Shailene Woodley that sparked cheating rumors.\nSpeculation surrounded Stone’s mysterious “tweet and delete” spree over the past few months.\nEmma addressed the rumors on an On Air with Ryan Seacrest radio interview.\nOne tweet in particular on her Twitter appeared to be an anagram that solved to read, “Andrew and Shailene sitting in a tree.”\n","tags":["celeb","Emma Stone","hack","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Emma Stone’s twitter hacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-23T14:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/23/apple-adds-two-step-verification-option-for-apple-ids/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"A new security option gives Apple’s customers a way to secure their Apple ID password using their phone.\nCross-posted from Cnet:\nApple today added an extra layer of security to its Apple ID system that can harden the password people use to log in to various Apple services.\nUsers with an Apple ID can now sign up for two-step verification of their password, a system that sends a four-digit passcode by text message to a user’s phone, and must be used on top of a regular password. In practice, this could keep an account from being compromised by an attacker, unless that person had access to the mobile device too.\n","tags":["Announcement","Apple","Security"],"title":"Apple adds two-step verification option for Apple IDs"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-03-17T21:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/17/what-is-the-largest-number-that-you-know/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" A googol: 1 followed by 100 zeros. Still tiny next to a googolplex.\nTonight I was talking with a friend about bad news for Google when he asked, almost as a side note:\nDid you know googol is a number?\nI did not. I knew Google, not googol. So I went looking — and fell into the oddly satisfying rabbit hole of named large numbers.\n","tags":["Mathematics","Curiosity"],"title":"What is the largest number that you know?"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-03-11T22:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/11/and-a2-is-passed/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Talking of German class, A2 is passed too and I will be heading to B1 in next 2 weeks.\nThese 2 classes in A2 (A2.1 and A2.2) had lots of memories for me, meeting good people, getting to know a really good man as teacher and…\nI never had this much happiness, sadness, stress, changes etc. in any era of my life, I’ve had lots of good memories from my first class but I can say A2 were more “living” with all the surrounding stories it had. Stuff that changed many things for me, and these changes cannot be undone, and I don’t want them to be undone. I will play it, I will take it and deal with it. Let’s see what happens.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"And “A2” is passed"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-03-04T23:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/04/new-toys-to-listen-music-even-better/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey Folks\nI’m back with some new toys to listen music even better, here we go:\nCreative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro USB Sound Card A USB Sound Card, better audio quality than internal sound card of computer (24-bit/96kHz) with a handy volume control on top. Since it connects to computer via a USB cable I can have it on my desk so connecting headphone or microphone to it is much easier too. It allow you to connect your speaker, microphone, aux and headphone all in same time.\n","tags":["information","My Life"],"title":"New toys to listen music even better"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-03-02T20:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/03/02/evernote-is-suspect-of-a-hack-change-your-password/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-posted from Evernote blog:\nEvernote’s Operations \u0026 Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service.\nAs a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset. Please read below for details and instructions.\nIn our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost. We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed.\n","tags":["Evernote","hack","Password","report","Security"],"title":"Evernote is suspect of a hack, change your password"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-27T16:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/27/stuxnet-missing-link-found-resolves-some-mysteries-around-the-cyberweapon/","readingTime":10,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-posted from WIRED.\nAs Iran met in Kazakhstan this week with members of the UN Security Council to discuss its nuclear program, researchers announced that a new variant of the sophisticated cyberweapon known as Stuxnet had been found, which predates other known versions of the malicious code that were reportedly unleashed by the U.S. and Israel several years ago in an attempt to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.\nThe new variant was designed for a different kind of attack against centrifuges used in Iran’s uranium enrichment program than later versions that were released, according to Symantec, the U.S-based computer security firm that reverse-engineered Stuxnet in 2010 and also found the latest variant.\n","tags":["Cyber War","Iran","Malware","News","review","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"Stuxnet Missing Link Found, Resolves Some Mysteries Around the Cyberweapon"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-26T17:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/26/internet-explorer-10-for-windows-7-download-links/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Internet Explorer 10 is available worldwide in 95 languages for download today.\nRead more in IE Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/02/26/ie10-for-windows-7-globally-available-for-consumers-and-businesses.aspx\nDownload Links:\nx86: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36808\nx64: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36806\nOther (Non-English) Languages: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-10/worldwide-languages\n","tags":["Browsers","Internet Explorer","Microsoft"],"title":"Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 [Download Links]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-19T20:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/19/doc-blocker-oxford-university-blocked-google-docs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" For about two and a half hours on Monday, students at Oxford University couldn’t access Google Docs after the University’s Computing Services team decided to take “extreme action” to halt phishing attacks and also to put pressure on Google.\nRobin Stevens of OxCert explained in a blog post that, in the past, Google has been slow to respond to requests to help the university. The university’s problem is that phishers are frequently using Google Docs to present phishing forms to its users, with a legitimate domain shown to the user and not detectable by firewalls as Google traffic is over SSL. If phishing mail directing users to pages like this gets past the defenses, it is hard to detect and respond to.\n","tags":["Google","Google Docs","Google Drive","News","Oxford","Phishing","report","Security"],"title":"Doc blocker : Oxford University blocked Google Docs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-16T13:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/16/dropbox-makes-pdf-viewing-less-painful-adds-push-notifications-for-shared-folders/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Just a few days after adding a new set of features to Dropbox for Teams, the cloud storage company rolled out a new version of its iOS application which introduces a few useful additions as well. For starters, it has added an improved PDF viewer, which lets you navigate to any page in the document by tapping on the thumbnail. It’s rather awesome, in fact. The update also introduces push notifications for folders shared with you – a feature that’s now available on Android, too.\n","tags":["Android","Announcement","Apple","Dropbox","iOS","News","PDF"],"title":"Dropbox Makes PDF Viewing Less Painful, Adds Push Notifications For Shared Folders"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-15T22:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/15/facebook-got-hacked-last-month-and-is-just-telling-you-now/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-posted from Gizmodo:\nFacebook just announced that it was hacked last month in a short statement on its website. Apparently, an unknown number employees visited a compromised developer site and were infected with malware. Facebook’s being very cagey about all this, but we’ve been able to scrounge up some details.\nAccording to the statement, the company reacted swiftly with an investigation and remediation following the “sophisticated attack.” The company won’t say which law enforcement agencies it’s working with. It claims no user data was compromised.\n","tags":["Facebook","hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Facebook Got Hacked Last Month and Is Just Telling You Now"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-14T21:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/14/new-adobe-vulnerabilities-being-exploited-in-the-wild/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe posted a vulnerability report warning that vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat XI (11.0.1) and earlier versions are being exploited in the wild. Adobe is currently investigating this issue.\nAccording to the FireEye blog posted earlier today, the malicious file arrives as a PDF file. Upon successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities, two malicious DLL files are dropped.\nSymantec detects the malicious PDF file as Trojan.Pidief and the two dropped DLL files as Trojan Horse.\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","exploit","report","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"New Adobe Vulnerabilities Being Exploited in the Wild"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-13T22:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/13/opera-switches-to-webkit-and-chromium/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"After many years of dealing with site compatibility issues, Opera found the solution: it will switch from its proprietary rendering engine (Presto) to WebKit and will be powered by Chrome’s open source version, Chromium.\n“Presto is a great little engine. It’s small, fast, flexible and standards compliant while at the same time handling real-world web sites. It has allowed us to port Opera to just about any platform you can imagine. (…) It was always a goal to be compatible with the real web while also supporting and promoting open standards. That turns out to be a bit of a challenge when you are faced with a web that is not as open as one might have wanted. Add to that the fact that it is constantly changing and that you don’t get site compatibility for free (which some browsers are fortunate enough to do), and it ends up taking up a lot of resources – resources that could have been spent on innovation and polish instead,” explains an Opera employee.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","News","Opera","WebKit"],"title":"Opera Switches to WebKit and Chromium"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2013-02-11T19:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/02/11/dorkbot-worm-lurks-on-skype-and-msn-messenger-again/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The Dorkbot/Rodpicom worm, which spreads via messaging applications and leads to additional malware infections, is currently doing rounds on Skype and MSN Messenger, warns Fortinet.\nThe vicious circle starts with potential victims receiving a direct message from a contact, asking “LOL is this your new profile pic? http://goo.gl/[removed]”. Those who follow the link land on a malicious site and are infected with the worm.\nApart from being able to send out the aforementioned message to further potential victims, the malware is also capable of opening a backdoor into the infected system, downloading more malicious software, spamming, reaching out to its C\u0026C server, downloading a new version of itself, and other malicious activities. The computer is essentially enslaved into a botnet and is ready to do the botnet master’s bidding.\nIt’s interesting to note that the worm waits until the victims log into the chat app they use and then send out the messages. It is also able of changing the language of the message to be consistent with the language of the installed Windows operating system, making it more believable that the message has been sent by the user.\nAccording to FortiGuard Labs researcher Raul Alvarez, the malware is also equipped with a number of evasive and obfuscation techniques aimed at hiding its existence both from AV software and researchers.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Messenger","Microsoft","MSN","Skype","Security"],"title":"Dorkbot worm lurks on Skype and MSN Messenger again"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2013-01-11T17:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2013/01/11/rocking-while-driving/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Hey GuysI’ve been playing some random music from my favorite playlist to spend some time and I found these stuff perfect for rocking while driving! here we go!\nTAI/Steve Aoki – Beat Down (Original Mix)\nPorter Robinson – Unison (Knife Party Remix)\n","tags":["Music Life"],"title":"Rocking while driving"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-11-29T20:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/11/29/google-updates-all-chrome-editions/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: Google has updated the Stable, Beta and Developer Channels of the desktop version of its Chrome browser with a number of bug fixes and improvements. The Stable Channel update closes seven security vulnerabilities, three of them rated High, and includes bug fixes. New stable Chrome versions for iOS and Android have also been released and include minor improvements. The iOS version of the browser now supports Apple’s Passbook application.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Google updates all Chrome editions"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-11-24T17:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/11/24/my-life-in-music-hushabye/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"This is how I go to bed, dreaming before I sleep.\nThis sunny Sunday\nIs a good day to go\nGuess you want me to stay\nWell then let me know\nAnd I hate to say\nIt’s been a waste of time\nI hate to interrupt the flow\n","tags":["Music Life"],"title":"My Life in Music: Hushabye"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-11-24T12:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/11/24/narilam-worm-manipulates-databases-in-iran/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: Security firm Symantec has discovered a specialised worm called W32.Narilam that can compromise SQL databases. Symantec reports that the malware “speaks” Persian and Arabic and appears to target mainly companies in Iran. Narilam is, therefore, reminiscent of Stuxnet and its variants.\nNarilam spreads via USB flash drives and network shares. Once inside the system, the worm searches for SQL databases that are accessible via the Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLEDB) API. Rather than steal found target data for intelligence purposes, the worm proceeds to modify or delete the data and can, says Symantec, cause considerable damage. Stuxnet similarly served no intelligence purpose and was designed to sabotage its target – an uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran.\n","tags":["Iran","Malware","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"Narilam Worm manipulates databases in Iran"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-11-23T16:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/11/23/my-life-in-music-wake-up/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This is how I start my day, everyday:\nWe got a fucked up reason to live\nwho really gives a fuck?\nwe’re gonna wake up hate\nwe’re gonna fuck you up\nI wanna break everything\nI wanna make it sting\nwe’re gonna wake up hate\nwe’re gonna wake it up\nYou gotta get it straight\nwe’re gonna give it up\nwe’re gonna wake up hate\nwe’re gonna fuck you up\nI wanna break everything\nI wanna make it sting\nwe’re gonna wake up hate\nwe’re gonna wake it up\n","tags":["Music Life"],"title":"My Life in Music: Wake Up"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-11-10T12:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/11/10/talking-about-true-meaning-of-loneliness/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate to others the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible . . .If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely”\n― C.G. Jung, 1989, p. 356\n","tags":["quote"],"title":"Talking about true meaning of loneliness"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-10-25T20:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/10/25/a-day-in-my-life/","readingTime":11,"section":"posts","summary":"Ding diding diding ding… Mobile phone’s alarm wake me up, It’s 8 AM again and it’s not either Thursday or Friday otherwise he would let me sleep a bit more, with closed eyes I look for the mobile beside my bed to find it and stop the alarm, I pick it up and drag that red button to stop the alarm, let’s take a look what happened in the last 4-5 hours that I’ve been sleeping, any text message or email? Hmmm, nothing important as expected just some social networks notifications and promotional email and no text message, what do I expect this early when during the day I get nothing?\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"A day in my life"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-10-18T23:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/10/18/disappear-from-world/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"You know, suicide is one of the stuff that I’ve always given a thumb-up to, but every person in this small world has their own reason to stay away from that, one may love his/her life and see no reason for doing that, good for them!, one may afraid of death, one may don’t afraid of death and care about what happens after their death and…\nThose people who think about “What happens after I do this” are same people who wish they could disappear from world, thinking wish they could left without having an effect on anyone else, Thinking “Can my mother take it?” or “How my sister will become after hearing this” etc. and the person think wish he/she could leave with his/her memory, clean everyone’s mind from his/her memory so everyone could forget there was such person in this world and then person could left without any memory, it’s about solving his/her own problem not throwing it at someone else, or solve their own problem and give a larger group lots of other problem like depression or ruining their life…\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Disappear from world"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-10-14T17:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/10/14/panetta-sounds-alarm-on-cyber-war-threat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I just read this and I decided to share with you:\nIn the hour-long session with the magazine’s editors, he said:\n– “We are facing the threat of a new arena in warfare that could be every bit as destructive as 9/11 — the American people need to know that. We can’t hide this from the American people any more than we should have hidden the terrorism-attack threat from the American people.”\n","tags":["Cyber War","Iran","News","Politics","US"],"title":"Panetta Sounds Alarm on Cyber-War Threat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-10-12T11:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/10/12/firefox-16-re-released-fixing-multiple-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The latest version of Firefox, version 16, has returned to Mozilla’s servers with the release of Firefox 16.0.1 after the discovery of vulnerabilities caused the organization to remove the just-released open source web browser from circulation. Mozilla’s security blog post described the problem as just that of a malicious web site being able to potentially determine the URLs and parameters used and suggested downgrading to Firefox 15.0.1, despite the numerous critical bugs fixed in Firefox 16.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","Security","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 16 re-released fixing multiple vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-10-12T11:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/10/12/mozilla-closes-numerous-critical-holes-in-firefox-16-update/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" The h-online: Following the recent Firefox 16 release, Mozilla has now detailed all of the security fixes in the new version of its open source web browser as well as in the Thunderbird news and email client. Version 2.13 of the SeaMonkey “all-in-one internet application suite” has also received fixes. In addition to adding new features, version 16.0 of Firefox closes a total of 14 security holes, 11 of which are rated as “Critical” by the project.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","SeaMoney","software","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Mozilla closes numerous critical holes in Firefox 16 [Update]"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-10-04T22:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/10/04/speak-up/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Say it even if they (whether it’s a he or she) don’t listen, even if you are afraid or even if you are too shy.\nStand up! Nobody’s dying to save you, Speak up! Nobody’s waiting to see you, Wake up! Nobody’s working to pay you…\nSay it, say that you are dying to see her once again, say that you will do everything to see her again, say it that she is all you world but you are just ashamed to tell her about that, say that you cannot stop thinking about her but you don’t dare to say that, say it!\n","tags":["I think"],"title":"Speak up"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-18T16:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/18/internet-explorer-security-hole-use-other-browser/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"TheTelegraph: Internet Explorer users might want to consider upgrading or switching to another browser after a massive security hole was discovered in Windows’ native web browser.\nAccording to security forum, Rapid7 , Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 operating on Windows XP, Vista and Seven contains what is known as a “zero day exploit” which allows attackers to gain access to your personal data while you browse.\nThe forum claimed the exploit would give cyber criminals “the same privileges as the current user”.\n","tags":["advice","Browsers","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Internet Explorer security hole: Use other browser"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-12T19:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/12/microsofts-september-patch-tuesday-closes-important-xss-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: On its September Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released two security updates that are rated as important and which close holes in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS) and Systems Management Server 2003 and 2007. Both updates fix cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the web interfaces that allow attackers to execute arbitrary code in the victim’s browser.\nAs the holes enable an attacker to access the web interfaces at the user’s privilege level, Microsoft has classified them as privilege escalation vulnerabilities. The company notes that, to its knowledge, neither of the holes is being actively exploited for attacks.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Updates","Windows","Security"],"title":"Microsoft's September Patch Tuesday closes important XSS holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-12T16:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/12/adobe-fixes-coldfusion-security-vulnerability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: On the same day as Microsoft’s September Patch Tuesday, Adobe released an update for ColdFusion to close a security hole in its rapid web application development software. The hotfix for ColdFusion addresses a vulnerability (CVE-2012-2048), which the company rates as important, that could be exploited by a remote attacker to cause a denial-of-service (DoS) condition.\nAccording to Adobe, the unspecified error affects versions 8.0, 8.0.1, 9.0 to 9.0.2, and 10 of ColdFusion for Windows, Mac OS X and UNIX. Installing the provided hotfix corrects the problem; download links and installation instructions for each affected version are provided on the APSB12-21 technote page. All users are advised to download and apply the hotfix. Adobe credits UK developer David Boyer for finding and reporting the problem.\n","tags":["Adobe","ColdFusion","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe fixes ColdFusion security vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-12T16:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/12/microsoft-to-patch-flash-hole-in-windows-8-shortly/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: Microsoft has confirmed that it will deliver a security update for the bundled version of Flash Player used by Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) sooner than previously planned. In a statement sent to ZDNet, Yunsun Wee, Trustworthy Computing Director at Microsoft, said that the company is working closely with Adobe on an updated version of the Flash plugin which “will be available shortly”.\nThe forthcoming Windows 8 comes with Internet Explorer 10, which, in turn, includes its own version of Flash Player. This arrangement relies on Microsoft’s automatic updates system, Windows Update, for updating the version of Flash included in the web browser.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Internet Explorer","Microsoft"],"title":"Microsoft to patch Flash hole in Windows 8 shortly"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-07T20:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/07/google-acquires-virustotal/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"This is what we read in latest post from VirusTotal in their blog:\nOur goal is simple: to help keep you safe on the web. And we’ve worked hard to ensure that the services we offer continually improve. But as a small, resource-constrained company, that can sometimes be challenging. So we’re delighted that Google, a long-time partner, has acquired VirusTotal. This is great news for you, and bad news for malware generators, because:\n","tags":["business","Google","Acquisition","Security"],"title":"Google Acquires VirusTotal"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-07T15:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/07/symantec-releases-norton-2013-security-suites/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews: Symantec has released brand new versions of its Norton security packages for Windows, Norton Anti-Virus 2013, Norton Internet Security 2013 and Norton 360 2013. It’s the first time all three packages have been updated simultaneously, while the branding has also been amended to remove all references to a date, simply naming each Norton Anti-Virus, Norton Internet Security and Norton 360, respectively.\nThe 2013 versions come with what Symantec describes as “five layers of patented protection”, which include stronger social networking and anti-scam protection. There’s also full, certified support for Windows 8 and the promise of better performance on multi-core CPUs.\n","tags":["antivirus","norton","Security","software","symantec","Updates"],"title":"Symantec releases Norton 2013 security suites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-07T06:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/07/symantec-claims-losses-from-cybercrime-exceed-100-billion/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: According to Symantec’s 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report, worldwide, private individuals have suffered approximately $100 billion (more than £69 billion at the current exchange rate) in financial losses as a result of cybercrime. In the period from July 2011 to July 2012, losses averaged $197 (£124) per victim.\nA total of 556 million adults are reported to have fallen victim to malware, phishing or similar virtual crimes. The report claims that there are 1.5 million victims of cybercrime each day, or about 18 per second. The security specialist’s report also states that two-thirds of internet users have been caught out by cybercriminals at some point in their lives, and almost half (46%) were victims during the period covered by the report. The results reveal that many of those affected are victims of their own carelessness. Around 40% of people don’t use complex passwords or don’t change their passwords regularly.\n","tags":["report","symantec"],"title":"Symantec claims losses from cybercrime exceed $100 billion"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-09-04T13:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/04/1-million-apple-device-ids-leaked-claim-hackers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" According to the AntiSec hacker group, they claim to hold more than 12 million Apple iOS Unique Device IDs, in addition to other personal information from device owners. As a move to back up such a claim, the AntiSec hacker group is said to have released slightly more than a million Apple Device IDs to the masses. This particular expose was unveiled on Pastebin, which is said to hold a detailed description of the method that the hacking group were said to have obtained the IDs from the FBI.\n","tags":["Apple","hack","report","Security"],"title":"1 million Apple Device IDs leaked, claim hackers"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-09-02T22:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/09/02/i-want-i-dont-want/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I never could understand those people that afraid everything and everyone, why people don’t live in a normal and easy world? Why take it so hard?\nI’m talking of the moment when I respect a boy and he behaves defensive because he thinks I’m looking for his money…\nI’m talking of the moment when I respect a man and he behaves defensive because he thinks I’m looking to use his position…\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I want, I don’t want"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-31T14:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/31/oracle-rushes-out-patch-for-critical-0-day-java-exploit/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" TheRegister: In an uncommon break with its thrice-annual security update schedule, Oracle has released a patch for three Java 7 security flaws that have recently been targeted by web-based exploits.\n“Due to the high severity of these vulnerabilities, Oracle recommends that customers apply this Security Alert as soon as possible,” Eric Maurice, the company’s director of software security assurance, said in a blog post published on Thursday.\nMaurice said that the vulnerabilities patched only affect Java running in browsers, and not standalone desktop Java applications or Java running on servers. According to Oracle’s official advisory on the flaws:\n","tags":["advice","Java","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Oracle rushes out patch for critical 0-day Java exploit"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-28T16:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/28/download-firefox-15-and-thunderbird-15/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-copied from BetaNews:\nMozilla has quietly placed major new versions of its open-source, cross-platform web browser and email client onto its download servers ahead of an official release.\nFirefox 15 FINAL benefits largely from behind-the-scenes performance tweaks, while Thunderbird 15 FINAL introduces a few new features, including a new curvy user interface.\nFirefox 15 FINAL’s most notable changes are performance-based. There’s faster startup on Windows PCs, plus incremental garbage collection and better management of plugins to prevent memory leaks. Other performance improvements surround WebGL enhancements.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla","software","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Download Firefox 15 and Thunderbird 15!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-27T19:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/27/java-zero-day-vulnerability-actively-used-in-targeted-attacks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" ZDNet: Security researchers from FireEye, AlienVault, and DeependResearch have intercepted targeted malware attacks utilizing the latest Java zero day exploit. The vulnerability affects Java 7 (1.7) Update 0 to 6. It does not affect Java 6 and below.\nBased on related reports, researchers were able to reproduce the exploit on Windows 7 SP1 with Java 7 Update 6. There’s also a Metasploit module available.\nUpon successful exploitation, the campaign drops MD5: 4a55bf1448262bf71707eef7fc168f7d – detected by 28 out of 42 antivirus scanners as Gen:Trojan.Heur.FU.bqW@a4uT4@bb; Backdoor:Win32/Poison.E\n","tags":["advice","Java","Oracle","report","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Java zero day vulnerability actively used in targeted attacks"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-27T19:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/27/dropbox-tests-two-factor-authentication/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: Cloud backup provider Dropbox says it has begun a public test of two-factor authentication for its service. Dropbox had announced it would start offering the security measure after the service experienced a data leak at the beginning of the month.\nUsers who activate two factor authentication will have to enter a security code after logging in with their username and password. The security code can only be used once and is sent to the user’s mobile phone in a text message. To generate security codes, users can also use a variety of smartphone applications such as Google Authenticator. Details of the process are given on the two-step verification help page.\n","tags":["Announcement","Beta","Dropbox","Security"],"title":"Dropbox tests two-factor authentication"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-08-26T20:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/26/rest-in-peace-neil-armstrong/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.\nNeil Armstrong\n1930 – 2012\nRest In Peace, we never will forget you.\n","tags":["events"],"title":"Rest In Peace Neil Armstrong"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-08-24T14:56:25Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/24/tarja-turunen-performed-act-1-live-in-rosario/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Act 1 is the first Live concert released by Tarja. It was released on CD, DVD and Blu-ray on the 24th of August, 2012.\n“Act 1” is the first live album from the Finnish former Nightwish soprano, Tarja Turunen. The two concerts were recorded and filmed with 10 HD cameras at the El Círculo Theatre in Rosario, Argentina, in March 2012. The track listing consists in a mix of her three solo albums, Nightwish’s classic Nemo and covers of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gary Moore and Whitesnake plus a variety of extras.\n","tags":["Tarja Turunen","Music"],"title":"Tarja Turunen Performed “Act 1” Live in Rosario"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-23T16:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/23/for-the-first-time-in-25-years-microsoft-is-changing-its-logo/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In advance of one of the most significant waves of product launches in Microsoft’s history, today they are unveiling a new logo for the company.\nMicrosoft TechNet wrote: It’s been 25 years since we’ve updated the Microsoft logo and now is the perfect time for a change. This is an incredibly exciting year for Microsoft as we prepare to release new versions of nearly all of our products. From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs. This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning. The Microsoft brand is about much more than logos or product names. We are lucky to play a role in the lives of more than a billion people every day. The ways people experience our products are our most important “brand impressions”. That’s why the new Microsoft logo takes its inspiration from our product design principles while drawing upon the heritage of our brand values, fonts and colors.\n","tags":["Microsoft","News"],"title":"For the first time in 25 years, Microsoft is changing its logo"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-23T14:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/23/crisis-malware-infects-vmware-virtual-machines/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" v3.co.uk: The Windows version of the Crisis Trojan is far more dangerous than first thought, being capable of infecting VMware virtual machine images, Windows Mobile devices and removable USB drives, research has revealed.\nCrisis was originally uncovered targeting businesses with social engineering attacks that trick users into running a malicious Java applet in July.\nSymantec has since revealed that the malware has more advanced capabilities, letting it search for and copy itself onto VMware virtual machine images on compromised computers.\n","tags":["Malware","report","VMware","Security"],"title":"Crisis malware infects VMware virtual machines"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-23T12:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/23/adobe-flash-player-update-patches-six-critical-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: Adobe has released the second update for its Flash Player software in a week, this time for six critical vulnerabilities. Four of the issues addressed are problems with memory corruption that could lead to remote code execution; additionally, the update fixes an integer overflow vulnerability that could also lead to remote code execution. Another bug that was fixed is a cross-domain information leak. The problems exist in Flash Player 11.3.300.271 and earlier versions on Windows, Macintosh and Linux, and in the Android versions 11.1.115.11 (Android 4.0) and 11.1.111.10 (Android 3.x and 2.x) and earlier.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Security","Updates"],"title":"Adobe Flash Player update patches six critical holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-23T12:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/23/firefox-17-to-make-add-ons-more-secure/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: As suggested by some of its developers back in 2010, the Firefox browser will introduce enhanced separation between add-ons and the rest of the browser. With the change, which is planned to take effect with the release of Firefox 17, scripts on web pages will only be able to access the data belonging to add-ons if they are included in a whitelist.\nThe beta version of Firefox 15 already logs warning messages in the browser’s Error Console when a page that is not on the whitelist tries to access data from add-ons. This behavior has been included to make add-on developers aware of the new policy and to give them time to fix their add-on’s behavior before the release of Firefox 17.\n","tags":["Announcement","Beta","Firefox","Firefox Addon","Mozilla"],"title":"Firefox 17 to make add-ons more secure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-20T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/20/amd-blog-hacked-database-leaked-on-internet/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" TheHackerNews: A team of Hackers called, “r00tBeer Security Team” today hack into official blog of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which is a American multinational semiconductor company. AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units.\nHacker deface the blog page (http://blogs.amd.com/wp-content/r00tbeer.html) [Dead Link – Screenshot blow] and also leak the complete user database of blog on his twitter account. Leaked database SQL file uploaded on Mediafire by Hackers which include 200 AMD user’s Emails, WordPress Blog Usernames and Passwords.\n","tags":["AMD","hack","report","Security"],"title":"AMD Blog Hacked, Database leaked on Internet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-19T14:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/19/not-so-secure-text-messaging-on-iphone-can-be-hacked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" FirstPost: A hacker Friday revealed a security flaw that he claimed could make Apple’s iPhone particularly vulnerable to text message cheating.\nThe flaw has existed since iPhone was first launched in 2007, and is still not solved in the beta version of iOS 6, the next operating system for iPhone, the hacker under the name “Pod2g” said in a blog post, reported Xinhua.\n","tags":["Apple","flaw","report","Vulnerability"],"title":"Not so secure: Text messaging on iPhone can be hacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-19T09:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/19/bogus-anti-hacking-tool-targets-syrian-activists/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: Syrian activists, journalists and opposition group members are reportedly under attack by malware claiming to be a security tool that will help protect them against hackers. The fake “AntiHacker” tool is being spread through targeted phishing emails and via sites such as Facebook, and claims to provide “Auto-Protect \u0026 Auto-Detect \u0026 Security \u0026 Quick scan and analyzing” functionality.\n","tags":["advice","hack","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Bogus anti-hacking tool targets Syrian activists"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-19T08:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/19/postgresql-patches-xml-flaws/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: A flaw in the built-in XML functionality of PostgreSQL (CVE-2012-3488) and another in its optional XSLT handling (CVE-2012-3489) have been patched, and the developers have released updated versions of the open source database with relevant fixes. The holes being patched are related to insecure use of the widely used libxml2 and libxslt open source libraries and the PostgreSQL developers advise anyone using those libraries to check their systems for similar problems.\n","tags":["flaw","PostgreSQL","SQL","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"PostgreSQL patches XML flaws"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-08-18T19:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/18/unfortunately-unforgettable-sweet-memories/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I don’t know if I should be happy or sad, when I remember sweet and beautiful memories which were nice at the moment those days but now they are gone and remembering them hurts.\nYeah it’s kinda weird that why such good memories can hurt, people always look for having good time with good people but when time goes on remembering those good times can be hurting and so you wish you had not those good days to remember them later and hurt yourself, ‘unfortunately unforgettable sweet memories’.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Unfortunately unforgettable sweet memories"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-16T10:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/16/ie-9-0-9-available-via-windows-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"MSDN:\nThe August 2012 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update. This security update resolves four privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 on Windows clients and Moderate for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 on Windows servers For more information, see the full bulletin.\n","tags":["Browsers","Internet Explorer","software","Updates"],"title":"IE 9.0.9 Available via Windows Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-16T10:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/16/googles-new-favicon/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System Blog: Google has a new favicon that looks like the icon from Google’s mobile search apps for Android and iOS. The same icon was also used for the Google Search app from the Chrome Web Store.\nMost likely, Google wanted to use the same icon irrespective of the platform so that it becomes instantly recognizable.\nHere’s the new favicon:\n… and the old favicon, which was launched back in 2009:\n","tags":["Google"],"title":"Google's New Favicon"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-04T08:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/04/adult-phishing-scams-haunt-aura-kasih/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Symantec: Phishers continue to target Indonesian celebrities with adult scams. Phishing attacks on rock star Ahmad Dhani have already been seen. In July 2012, Symantec observed a phishing site that claimed to have an adult video of Indonesian actress and singer Aura Kasih. The phishing site spoofed a social networking brand and was hosted on a free Web hosting site.\nThe adult scam came in light of a recent scandal surrounding the singer. An adult video, allegedly of Aura Kasih and pop star Nazril Irham, has been circulating recently in Indonesia over the internet and mobile phones. It is rumored that the video started appearing after Nazril Irham’s laptop was stolen.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","Security"],"title":"Adult Phishing Scams Haunt Aura Kasih"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-03T09:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/03/final-version-of-windows-8-leaked-online-no-windows-media-player-yet/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Ubergizmo: Good news for those looking to get their hands on Windows 8 before everyone else does, the final build of Windows 8 has just been leaked online. This news comes a day after it was announced that the final version of Windows 8 had been finished. MSDN and TechNet customers won’t be able to download their version of Windows 8 until August 15th, an enterprise version of Windows 8 is currently making rounds at different file sharing websites across the web.\n","tags":["leak","Microsoft","Windows","Windows 8"],"title":"Final version of Windows 8 leaked online, No Windows Media Player yet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-03T09:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/03/google-wallet-now-accepts-multiple-cards/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Google just took your phone a step closer to replacing your wallet in the mobile payment revolution.\nThe company expanded its mobile payments platform, Google Wallet, to accept multiple credit cards. Users can now connect their Visa , MasterCard, American Express, or Discover cards with the new version of Google Wallet. It’s an update from the company’s previous partnership with MasterCard, Citigroup and Sprint.\n","tags":["business","Google","News"],"title":"Google Wallet now accepts multiple cards"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-03T09:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/03/adobe-flash-player-11-3-300-270-for-windows-released-to-address-a-crash/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Adobe wrote:\nToday, Flash Player 11.3.300.270 for Windows was released to address a crash that was occurring in the Adobe Flash Player Update Service (FlashPlayerUpdateService.exe). There are no other fixes or changes provided with this build. This release is available for Windows only, and affects the Active X and Plug-in installers, uninstaller, and msi’s (available on the distribution page.) No other platforms are affected.\nPlease be aware that this release is not available from the Product Download Center (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer) which will continue to provide 11.3.300.268. We realize that this might cause confusion for some users. Due to the severity of this issue, we decided to make this build available immediately to help customers affected by this bug. Due to logistical issues and time constraints, we were unable to update the release on the Product Download Center. The next release of Flash Player will correct this disparity. Please note that unless you have been affected by the FlashPlayerUpdateService.exe crash, both 11.3.300.270 and 11.3.300.268 will be functionally identical.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","software","Updates"],"title":"Adobe Flash Player 11.3.300.270 for Windows released to address a crash"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-03T08:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/03/microsoft-unleashes-windows-attack-tool/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"TheRegister.co.uk wrote:\nAttack Surface Analyzer explains what apps do to your beautiful Windows installation\nDevelopers, developers …. *\u0026^%%!!# developers who break Windows!\nThat may well be a refrain that motivated Redmond to release a new software tool, Surface Analyzer 1.0, which explains how new apps impact Windows’ ability to repel the various varieties of naughtyware.\nMicrosoft explains the tool’s powers thusly:\nAttack Surface Analyzer looks for classes of security weaknesses Microsoft has seen when applications are installed on the Windows operating system, and it highlights these as issues. The tool also gives an overview of changes to the system that Microsoft considers important to the security of the platform, and it highlights these changes in the attack surface report. Some of the checks performed by the tool include analysis of changed or newly added files, registry keys, services, Microsoft ActiveX controls, listening ports and other parameters that affect a computer’s attack surface.\n","tags":["Announcement","Microsoft","Security"],"title":"Microsoft unleashes Windows attack tool"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-02T20:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/02/anonymous-hackers-identify-charity-attacker/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"BBC: Hacking group Anonymous has aided a global search for a cyber-vandal who defaced a charity website.\nMembers of Anonymous helped track the attacker down to Madrid following a plea from the owner of the RedSky video production company.\nNew Zealand-based RedSky asked for help after an attacker penetrated its website, erased data and left graffiti.\nThe attack was reportedly carried out in a bid to impress Anonymous and join its ranks as a member.\n","tags":["Anonymous","hack","report","Security"],"title":"Anonymous hackers identify charity attacker"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-02T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/02/chrome-21-arrives-with-new-api-for-video-and-audio-communication/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: With the release of Chrome 21, web applications can now directly access the local system’s built-in camera and microphone. Instead of requiring a special plugin, the major stable update to the WebKit-based web browser includes a new HTML5 [getUserMedia](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/getusermedia/intro/) API – currently a W3C Editor’s Draft – to provide web apps with access to the camera and microphone. For security purposes, users will be prompted to grant apps permission to access the hardware.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 21 arrives with new API for video and audio communication"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-02T19:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/02/libreoffice-vulnerable-to-multiple-buffer-overflows/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: Three weeks after releasing LibreOffice 3.5.5, The Document Foundation has confirmed that security holes in earlier versions of the open source LibreOffice productivity suite can be exploited by attackers to compromise a victim’s system. According to the project’s security advisory, these include multiple heap-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the XML manifest encryption tag parsing code.\nSuccessful exploitation of the vulnerabilities could lead to the execution of arbitrary code on a system with the privileges of a local user. For an attack to be successful, a victim must first open a specially crafted Open Document Format (ODF) file. Versions up to and including LibreOffice 3.5.4 are affected; upgrading to version 3.5.5 or later fixes these problems. All users are advised to upgrade.\n","tags":["libreOffice","report","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"LibreOffice vulnerable to multiple buffer overflows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-02T14:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/02/ladies-with-few-clothes-tend-to-cause-a-lot-of-trouble-on-pcs-and-now-on-android-devices-too/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-posted from Surelist\nThe appearance of a new Android malware family is not that surprising at all today. Especially when we talk about SMS Trojans which are one of the most popular and oldest type of threats created for extracting money from users. A new family of SMS Trojans named Vidro appeared a few days ago but we’ve already collected a lot of APK files with very similar functionality. At the moment all the samples we have found target users only from Poland.\n","tags":["advice","analyze","Android","Malware","review","Sex","Security"],"title":"Ladies with few clothes tend to cause a lot of trouble on PCs – and now on Android devices too"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-02T13:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/02/outlook-com-gets-1-million-users-in-first-6-hours/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Mashable Wrote:\nThe team behind Outlook.com revealed in a tweet that one million people signed up for the new email service in just six hours.\nMicrosoft unveiled its Hotmail replacement Tuesday at noon Eastern, and by dinnertime it had cracked seven digits.\nThat’s an impressive spike, illustrated in the chart that @Outlook attached to the tweet (shown below). However, it’s still a tiny fraction of the user base of Hotmail, which comScore pegs at about 350 million — making it the most popular free email service in the world.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Outlook","Outlook.com","report"],"title":"Outlook.com Gets 1 Million Users in First 6 Hours"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-08-02T13:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/08/02/grand-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-joins-instagram-posts-pics/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei joined Instagram last week and so far has posted four photos. Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 chose to share shots that likely show scenes of Ramadan.\nIt comes as a surprise to some that a person who has been slow to get onboard with social media trends — not to mention Iran’s stance toward its citizens’ use of the social media — has joined Instagram. His Twitter account has 4,337 followers so far, and links to his Instagram account. Also posted on his Twitter account are links to YouTube videos and stories about his visits with other world and religious leaders.\n","tags":["Instagram","Iran","News","Twitter"],"title":"Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Joins Instagram, Posts Pics"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-31T16:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/31/cloud-service-cracks-vpn-passwords-in-24-hours/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: At the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas, encryption expert Moxie Marlinspike promised that his CloudCracker web service was able to crack any VPN or WiFi connection secured using MS-CHAPv2 within 24 hours. The cost? Around $200.\nMS-CHAPv2 is based on the eminently crackable encryption algorithm DES. The problem was first documented in 1999 by Bruce Schneier working with two other researchers. A large number of processor cores are still required to crack the encryption within a reasonable time – the number of possible keys makes trying to perform a brute force attack on a normal PC a hopeless task.\n","tags":["Cloud","hack","Password","report","Security"],"title":"Cloud service cracks VPN passwords in 24 hours"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-26T14:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/26/password-leak-at-meetone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: A data leak at the meetOne dating site allowed anyone to access private data including the plaintext passwords, email addresses and real names of the site’s approximately 900,000 members. To obtain the data, an attacker simply needed to increment a URL parameter. After they were informed by The H‘s associates at heise Security, the operators soon closed the hole.\nWhen news of a data leak in one of the dating portal’s custom APIs was disclosed to heise Security, the editors managed to reproduce the problem and access the data of a specially created test profile. The API disclosed information including the email address and password of the test user, which allowed access to the user’s profile.\n","tags":["hack","leak","Password","report","Security"],"title":"Password leak at meetOne"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-26T14:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/26/trojan-made-in-germany-spies-in-bahrain/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"h-Online: Citizenlab has released a detailed analysis of the activities of a trojan in which the experts conclude that the malware is most likely closely related to FinFisher, a commercial spyware tool developed by a company called Gamma International. The trojan targeted political activists in Bahrain and included sender names such as that of an Al Jazeera correspondent and subject lines like “Torture reports on Rabil Najaab”.\nThe attached .exe file, disguised as an image, disabled anti-virus software and installed a complete set of spyware programs on the recipient’s PC. The spyware proceeded to monitor, among other things, the victim’s Skype communications including conversations and file transfers. An analysis of the infected systems’ working memory repeatedly produced the “finspy” character string. This name is used by Gamma to advertise FinFisher modules.\n","tags":["Malware","report","review","trojan","Security"],"title":"Trojan \"made in Germany\" spies in Bahrain"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-25T21:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/25/brit-accused-of-biggest-military-hack-in-history/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" iol scitech: London – A British computer hacker accused by the United States of breaking into top secret military and space agency networks will learn the result of his six-year fight against extradition within three months, a court heard on Tuesday.\nGary McKinnon faces up to 60 years in jail if convicted in American courts for what one US prosecutor has described as the “biggest military computer hack of all time”.\n","tags":["hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Brit accused of biggest military hack in history"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-25T14:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/25/virustotal-online-scanner-adds-behavior-analysis/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: The developers of the VirusTotal online virus scanner service are currently testing a new sandbox feature to provide users with more meaningful scan results. In a post on the company’s blog, software architect and developer Emiliano Martinez says that, for this purpose, samples uploaded to the service are executed in a controlled sandbox environment where their actions can be “recorded in order to give the analyst a high level overview of what the sample is doing”.\n","tags":["Announcement","antivirus","News","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"VirusTotal online scanner adds behavior analysis"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-25T13:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/25/symantec-ceo-steps-down-replaced-by-chairman/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Computer World: Security software vendor Symantec said Wednesday that Enrique Salem, its president and chief executive officer, had stepped down with immediate affect, after the company reported that its revenue for the quarter ended June 29 grew 1% year-over-year to $1.7 billion.\nSymantec said its board of directors has appointed Steve Bennett, the current chairman of the board, to also hold the posts of president and chief executive officer.\n","tags":["News","symantec"],"title":"Symantec CEO steps down, replaced by chairman"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-24T21:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/24/could-romney-really-ban-porn/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"TechChurch wrote:\n“Computer pornography has given new meaning to the words ‘home invasion,’” Romney said at a 2007 Values Voter summit, “If I am President, I will work to make sure that every computer sold into the home has an easy to engage pornography filter so that every parent can protect their child from unwanted filth.” Federal obscenity laws used to prosecute porn moguls, such as Hustler’s Larry Flynt_, have largely been limited to child pornography since the rise of the Internet, but there’s an open debate as to whether they could be reactivated.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Could Romney Really Ban Porn?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-24T19:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/24/anonymous-hackers-cripple-australian-govt-websites/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" FoxNews: International hacking group Anonymous took at least 10 Australian government websites offline briefly Tuesday in a series of escalating attacks over proposed changes to privacy laws.\nThe Australian arm of the group has warned it will continue the attacks on “.gov.au” sites until plans to force ISPs to store user data and make it further available to security services are shelved.\nThe attacks started after Prime Minister Julia Gillard answered policy questions via webcam in an online Google+ Hangout session on Saturday but the sites targeted so far are all run by the Queensland State Government.\n","tags":["Anonymous","hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Anonymous hackers cripple Australian gov't websites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-24T19:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/24/11-million-passwords-leaked-from-online-gaming-platform/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-Online: A file with 11 million password hashes belonging to users of the online games platform Gamigo has been circulated on the internet. According to an analysis by ZDNet, 8.2 million different email addresses are also part of the 478MB file. Around 3 million of these belong to users from the US, 2.4 million are German addresses and 1.3 million are supposed to originate in France. The list also includes corporate email addresses from companies such as IBM, Siemens, Deutsche Bank and the German insurance company Allianz.\n","tags":["Gaming","hack","leak","Password","Security"],"title":"11 million passwords leaked from online gaming platform"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-22T21:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/22/why-google-or-facebook-buying-your-favorite-startup/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Time Techland wrote:\nWhen I learned this morning, via Twitter, that the small company behind Mac/iOS e-mail app Sparrow was being bought by Google, I almost didn’t need to read the startup’s announcement to know the upshot.\nGoogle and Facebook buy itty-bitty web companies all the time. And the acquired businesses typically convey what’s happening in an eerily consistent five-step ritual:\nAnnouncement of thrilling acquisition Reiteration of startup’s wildly ambitious founding notion Explanation that either Google or Facebook is the best place to change the world Acknowledgement (or sometimes non-acknowledgement) that the startup’s product is being discontinued or is going into limbo Expression of heartfelt gratitude to various supporters, usually including the consumers who are losing their something they liked So it seems to be going with Sparrow: Its five-person team will be working on Gmail henceforth; the existing Sparrow apps aren’t being discontinued, but they apparently won’t get any updates, either.\n","tags":["business","Facebook","Google","review","Career"],"title":"Why Google or Facebook Buying Your Favorite Startup"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-21T04:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/21/urgent-security-update-for-teamviewer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: The TeamViewer developers have released updates for a potential security vulnerability discovered in the remote access tool. The company recommends that users install the security updates immediately. Versions 5 to 7 of the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux editions of TeamViewer Full and TeamViewer QuickSupport are affected. The flaw does not appear to have been discovered in TeamViewer Host.\nThe company has not offered any details of the vulnerability, but updated editions of the software can be obtained from the TeamViewer Download page. The new version can simply be installed over the previous installation.\n","tags":["Security","software","TeamViewer","Updates"],"title":"Urgent security update for TeamViewer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-20T18:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/20/firefox-new-tab-feature-tweaked-following-privacy-concerns/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" h-online: Mozilla has implemented changes to Firefox 14 that address concerns raised by privacy-conscious users over the “new tab” feature in Firefox 13. The Firefox developers have changed the browser’s behavior so that sensitive information should no longer leak via screenshots of web sites.\nWhen opening a new tab, Firefox 13 shows users a grid of screenshots of their most visited pages. After this feature was introduced, several users complained to Mozilla and pointed out that the feature also takes screenshots of sensitive web sites such as login pages for online banking sites.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","privacy"],"title":"Firefox \"new tab\" feature tweaked following privacy concerns"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-07-20T17:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/20/what-are-we-doing-to-our-planet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This is a picture that ‘The New York Times’ shared today:\nDavid and Arlan Tackley inspect parched corn on a farm near El Dorado, Kan. The latest forecasts call for increasingly dry conditions over much of the nation’s breadbasket, which could lead to higher food prices. (Photo: Mashid Mohadjerin for The New York Times)\nIt made me thinking what we are doing to our planet? How much really we care and what we have done to save it?\n","tags":["I think"],"title":"What are we doing to our planet?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-20T15:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/20/marissa-mayer-and-future-relationship-of-yahoo-google-and-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Eric Jackson in Forbes Wrote:\nThere are so many intriguing aspects of Marissa Mayer‘s hiring at Yahoo! (YHOO).\nHowever, what intrigues me the most is the what the future strategic direction of Yahoo! will be under her watch and what this means for the company’s future relationships with Google (GOOG) and Facebook(FB) (not to mention Microsoft(MSFT)).\nPresumably, Marissa already has the start of a strategic vision. And she said as much in a leaked memo yesterday:\n","tags":["business","Facebook","Google","Marissa Mayer","Yahoo"],"title":"Marissa Mayer and Future Relationship of Yahoo!, Google and Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-19T23:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/19/security-researchers-take-out-botnet-responsible-for-18-billion-spam-emails-a-day/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Independent: If you’re a fan of fake Rolex watches and cheap Viagra look away now.\nA huge spam botnet responsible for an estimated 18 billion messages a day has been taken out by security researchers.\nThe four year old botnet – known as Grum – is believed to have been responsible for around 18% of the world’s spam emails.\nA botnet is a cluster of infected computers used by cybercriminals to send a variety of spam emails – often offering cheap Viagra, fake watches or unusual dating solutions.\n","tags":["News","spam","Security"],"title":"Security researchers take out botnet responsible for 18 billion spam emails a day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-19T22:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/19/aguilera-hacker-stole-my-feeling-of-security/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" The Smoking Gun: Christina Aguilera contends that the recent hacking of her e-mail account had stripped her of a “feeling of security” that now “can never be given back,” according to a victim’s impact statement submitted to a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles.\nThe singer’s statement was prepared in advance of the sentencing of Christopher Chaney, the Florida felon/online stalker who has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing the e-mail accounts of more than 50 victims (many of them Hollywood figures).\n","tags":["celeb","hack","News","Security"],"title":"Aguilera: Hacker Stole My \"Feeling Of Security\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-19T10:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/19/indonesia-blocks-porn-sites-during-ramadan/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" ZDNet: Indonesia’s communications and information ministry has shut down more than one million pornographic Web sites ahead of Islamic holy month of Ramadan commencing Jul. 19, according to a newswire. Observers of the Muslim month of fasting refrain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from dawn until sunset.\nAll of the sites were reportedly outside the country and more will be clamped down this month, XBIZ newswire reported Wednesday. However, this does not mean that such sites will be allowed to operate during the rest of the year, Indonesia’s communication and information minister, Tifatul Sembiring said.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Indonesia blocks porn sites during Ramadan"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-19T09:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/19/fake-facebook-photo-notifications-contain-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mashable: Sophos’s NakedSecurity blog outlined the threat on Wednesday. The company’s SophosLabs intercepted a “spammed-out email campaign” which was designed to spread malware. Sophos provided the following example:\nThe blog notes that the email address above misspells “Facebook” as “Faceboook.” The link takes the user to a malicious iFrame script, which exposes the user’s computer to malware. However, within four seconds, the user’s browser is directed to a presumably innocent Facebook page like the one below to act as a smokescreen.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Malware","spam","warning","Security"],"title":"Fake Facebook Photo Notifications Contain Malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-19T07:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/19/spam-attack-on-dropbox-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Spammers are currently sending large volumes of spam to users of cloud storage service provider Dropbox. The H’s associates at heise Security have so far received four different pieces of German-language spam at an email address used solely to register with Dropbox, and some of their readers have reported the same problem; similar reports can also be found on the Dropbox forums. In almost all cases, the spam is for suspicious-looking online casinos.\n","tags":["Dropbox","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Spam attack on Dropbox users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-18T10:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/18/madi-malware-another-trojan-targets-organizations-from-the-middle-east-updated/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This article is copied from Softpedia:\nResearchers from Symantec, Kaspersky and Seculert **have all come across Madi (Madhi), a relatively new piece of malware that mainly targets organizations from the Middle East.\n**\nBefore we take a look at Madi and compare it to other infamous Trojans such as Stuxnet, Duqu, or Flame, let’s take a quick look at its name.\nAccording to Wikipedia, Mahdi is considered to be the redeemer of Islam who will rid the world of tyranny, injustice and wrongdoings.\n","tags":["Iran","Malware","News","review","trojan","Security"],"title":"Madi Malware: Another Trojan Targets Organizations from the Middle East [Updated]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-17T19:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/17/firefox-thunderbird-panda-and-more-updates/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mozilla Firefox: Mozilla has released a new update for Firefox, Mozilla Firefox 14.0.1, This version comes with Google Secure search by default, flat buttons in toolbar and some Performance improvement and security fixes. Read more in Mozilla Blog.\nMozilla Thunderbird: Mozilla also updated Thunderbird, Mozilla Thunderbird 14, This version mostly focus on stability, performance and security fixes. I think we cannot expect much more new feature in Thunderbird anymore, Mozilla has announced that they changed the way they develop Thunderbird, Read it yourself in Mozilla Blog.\n","tags":["antivirus","Firefox","Microsoft","Mozilla","panda","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Firefox, Thunderbird, Panda and more updates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-17T13:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/17/longtime-google-exec-marissa-mayer-is-yahoos-new-ceo/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" TechChurch: Marissa Mayer, the technology executive who has worked at Google since the search company’s earliest days, has been appointed CEO of Yahoo.\nThe news was first reported by the New York Times. The company has confirmed the appointment in a press release, which is embedded in full below.\nMayer’s first day will be tomorrow, which is also when Yahoo’s next quarterly earnings call is slated to take place.\nContinue Reading Here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/yahoo-marissa-mayer-ceo/\n","tags":["Google","Marissa Mayer","News","Yahoo"],"title":"Longtime Google Exec Marissa Mayer Is Yahoo’s New CEO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-16T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/16/nvidia-hackers-publish-user-data/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Late last week, NVIDIA confirmed that the database for its forums web site had been broken into by unauthorized third parties, with data from more than 400,000 registered users affected. A hacker group calling itself “Team Apollo” has now claimed responsibility for the breach which caused NVIDIA to take the site down.\nAs proof, they have published email addresses and password hashes for approximately 800 users from the database on Pastebin, with more, apparently, to follow. If the data proves to be genuine, NVIDIA’s statement that the password hashes were salted would be contradicted: the database excerpt includes the hash b018f55f348b0959333be092ba0b1f41 three times in the list, the result of md5('nvidia123').\n","tags":["hack","link","nvidia","report","Security"],"title":"NVIDIA hackers publish user data"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-15T18:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/15/botnet-sends-out-spam-as-malware-spreads-on-android-phones-researcher/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Malware has been spreading on Android mobile phones that takes control of certain email accounts to create a “botnet” to send out spam, a security researcher says.\nMicrosoft security engineer Terry Zink says the malware has infected phones of users’ Yahoo email accounts to send out spam messages.\n“We’ve all heard the rumors, but this is the first time I have seen it – a spammer has control of a botnet that lives on Android devices,” Zink said in a blog post on Tuesday.\n","tags":["Android","Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"‘Botnet' sends out spam as malware spreads on Android phones: researcher"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-15T13:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/15/fake-skype-app-on-android-is-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"ZDNet Wrote:\nA new piece of malware is trying to take advantage of Skype’s increasing popularity, especially on mobile devices. Cybercriminals have created a fake version of the Skype for Android app, designed to earn money from unsuspecting users. Trend Micro, which first discovered the malware, is calling this particular threat JAVA_SMSSEND.AB.\nThe Java in the name should not surprise you, given that Android apps are primarily developed in a custom version of the programming language. Thankfully, this is not a very good fake. The app in question only runs on older (pre Software Installation Script) Symbian phones or Android devices that allow execution of Java MIDlet.\n","tags":["Android","Google","Malware","scam","Skype","warning","Security"],"title":"Fake Skype app on Android is malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-13T10:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/13/chrome-20-update-fixes-high-risk-security-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has published a new update to the stable 20.x branch of Chrome to close a number of security holes in the WebKit-based web browser. Version 20.0.1132.57 of Chrome addresses a total of three vulnerabilities, all of which are rated as “high severity” by the company.\nThese include two use-after-free errors in counter handling and in layout height tracking that were discovered by a security researcher by the name of “miaubiz”. As part of its Chromium Security Vulnerability Rewards program, Google paid the researcher, who is number three in the company’s Security Hall of Fame, $1,000 for discovering and reporting each of the holes. A third high-risk problem related to object access with JavaScript in PDFs has also been corrected. As usual, further details about the vulnerabilities are being withheld until “a majority of users are up-to-date with the fix”. Other changes include stability improvements, and updates to the V8 JavaScript engine and the built-in Flash player plug-in.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 20 update fixes high-risk security vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-13T09:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/13/android-forums-hacked-1-million-user-credentials-stolen/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ZDNet: Phandroid’s AndroidForums.com has been hacked. The database that powers the site was compromised and more than 1 million user account details were stolen. If you use the forum, make sure to change your password asap.\nRead the whole story at ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/android-forums-hacked-1-million-user-credentials-stolen-7000000817/\n","tags":["advice","hack","leak","report","Security"],"title":"Android Forums hacked: 1 million user credentials stolen"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-12T08:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/12/yahoo-voice-reportedly-compromised-over-453000-credentials-exposed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Übergizmo wrote: If you use Yahoo! Voice a lot – Yahoo’s VoIP service via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application, then you will definitely need to hear this report. Earlier today, more than 453,000 user accounts from an unidentified service owned by Yahoo were posted on a hacker site. The hackers reportedly said that they infiltrated the subdomain by using a union-based SQL injection. But the group responsible for the security breach added that the data breach was intended to be a wake-up call for Yahoo.\n","tags":["advice","attack","hack","leak","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Yahoo! Voice reportedly compromised, over 453,000 credentials exposed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-07-08T15:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/08/important-today-is-your-last-chance-to-keep-your-internet-connection/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Tomorrow, July 9th, the FBI will shutdown the DNS servers which allow the computers infected with this malware to use the Internet.\nIf you want to make sure you will keep your internet working, act today and check your computer to see if it’s infected by DNS Changer or not, here is a very easy to use tool: Tool available for those affected by the DNS-Changer\n","tags":["advice","alert","FBI","Malware","Security"],"title":"Important: Today is your last chance to keep your internet connection"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-07-04T15:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/07/04/happy-independence-day-4th-july/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Happy 4th July, Independence Day!\nMeanwhile: Celebrating Independence Day at the White House\n","tags":["events"],"title":"Happy Independence Day, 4th July"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-29T20:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/29/scarlett-johansson-leaked-nude-photos-cost-66000-for-the-hacker/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Copied from LA-Times:\nA man who hacked the email accounts of celebrities should pay movie star Scarlett Johansson $66,179.46 in compensation, federal prosecutors said.\nThe hacker also should serve 71 months in prison and pay a total of $150,000 in compensation to all his victims, prosecutors said in court papers filed this week.\nChristopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Fla., who pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to nine counts of computer hacking, for two years hacked almost daily into email accounts of 50 people in the entertainment industry.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","leak","News","report","Security"],"title":"Scarlett Johansson leaked nude photos cost $66,000 for the hacker"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-29T20:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/29/third-edition-of-vulnerability-spotter-secunia-psi/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Version 3 of Personal Software Inspector (PSI), Secunia‘s free program updater, has been released with a much simplified user interface, enabling less technically astute users to keep their Windows applications up to date as well.\nAccording to Secunia, the automatic updater has also been enhanced. PSI is now able to keep programs from more than 3,000 companies up to date, though, as before, PSI only cares about updates which fix security vulnerabilities. Version 3 also includes additional translations, including German. The software checks the user’s computer for outdated program versions known to contain vulnerabilities and either installs updates or provides links to download them.\n","tags":["Announcement","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Third edition of vulnerability spotter Secunia PSI"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-29T19:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/29/wordpress-3-4-update-closes-important-security-hole/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The WordPress developers have released version 3.4.1 of their popular open source publishing platform, fixing a number of bugs and closing security holes, one of which is rated as important. WordPress 3.4, which has already been downloaded 3 million times since being released two weeks ago, contains a important privilege escalation flaw that accidentally allowed all administrators and editors on multi-site installations to use unfiltered_html. This could have been exploited by users for cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks by, for example, publishing posts containing malicious code.\n","tags":["Security","Updates","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress 3.4 update closes important security hole"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-27T18:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/27/chrome-20-closes-23-security-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has closed a total of 23 vulnerabilities with the release of Chrome 20. Of those vulnerabilities, 14 are rated critical, enabling attackers to execute code in the browser’s sandbox, among other things. Integer overflow vulnerabilities in the code for processing PDF files and Matroska containers (.mkv) have also been fixed. Chrome 20 also includes the latest version of Adobe’s Flash Player on Linux, using the new cross-platform Pepper API. In testing at The H, it was confirmed that the Flash Player support also works on 64-bit Linux systems.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Security","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 20 closes 23 security holes"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-06-27T14:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/27/goodbye-lonesome-george/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"R.I.P. Lonesome George. He was the last of his species.\n","tags":["events"],"title":"Goodbye Lonesome George"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-25T16:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/25/update-for-windows-update-has-teething-troubles/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft has released an unscheduled, non-patch day update for Windows to update the Windows Update function itself. However, according to reports from readers, the Windows Update Agent update does not always run smoothly; The H’s associates at heise Security also ran into problems on their test systems.\nA staggered dissemination of the update has been taking place over the past three to four days. Users who run Windows Update are confronted with a message which says that an update for Windows Update needs to be installed before the system can check for other updates.\n","tags":["Microsoft","problems","report","Updates","Windows"],"title":"Update for Windows Update has teething troubles"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-25T16:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/25/worth-reading-escape-from-adobes-sandbox/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe Reader X runs in a sandbox at a very restricted privilege level. Important system calls are supposed to be handled by a special broker process that will subject them to extensive testing. However, a small design flaw allows attackers to escape from this sandbox and execute arbitrary code – despite having both ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomisation) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention).\nAs described by Guillaume Delugré, the broker process is at the heart of the exploit as it uses a memory page allocated via VirtualAllocEx to store the overwritten code of system calls which have been redirected to the broker. Despite having ASLR, however, the memory address returned by VirtualAllocEx is not randomised. This means that the Windows system function call will end up in a predictable, “nearly constant” location which the exploit can then access directly.\n","tags":["Adobe","sandbox","Security"],"title":"Worth Reading: Escape from Adobe's sandbox"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-23T20:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/23/adobe-updates-flash-player-11-3-to-fix-firefox-crashing-problem/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe has released an updated version of its proprietary Flash Player 11.3 plugin to address a bug that caused Firefox 13 on Windows to crash for some users. The problem is believed to have been related to the recently introduced Protected Mode for the Windows version of Flash Player and the open source web browser; the new mode is designed to isolate the plugin from the rest of the system by running it in its own sandbox.\n","tags":["Adobe","Firefox","flash player","software","Updates"],"title":"Adobe updates Flash Player 11.3 to fix Firefox crashing problem"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-23T20:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/23/critical-vulnerabilities-closed-by-winamp-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" With the release of version 5.63 of Winamp, Nullsoft, a division of AOL Music, has eliminated four critical security vulnerabilities in the media player. Three of these were heap-based buffer overflows in Winamp’s bmp.w5s component that could have been exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system.\nFor an attack to be successful, a user must first open a specially crafted AVI file. It has been confirmed that the vulnerability affects version 5.622; other builds may also be affected. The update also addresses unspecified errors in the in_mod.dll module that could have been used to corrupt memory and could possibly result in arbitrary code being executed. Upgrading to Winamp 5.63, specifically build 3234 (5.6.3.3234), fixes these problems.\n","tags":["Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Critical vulnerabilities closed by Winamp update"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-06-17T18:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/17/happy-fathers-day/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" “Today, we celebrate men who have risen to the task, who raised us, and who do that most important work of parenting, day in and day out, with love, humility, and pride.”\n–President Obama\n","tags":["events"],"title":"Happy Father’s Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-14T11:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/14/opera-12-has-been-released/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Norwegian company Opera Software has released Opera 12.00 just a few minutes ago. Opera users who start the browser on their system should see update notifications displayed to them in the next couple of hours. Those who do not want to wait that long can run a manual check for updates with a click on Opera \u003e Help \u003e Check for Updates. The update should then be picked up by the browser and downloaded automatically to the local system.\n","tags":["Browsers","Opera","software","Updates"],"title":"Opera 12 has been released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-14T11:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/14/1-5-million-records-compromised-in-global-payments-breach/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" v3.co.uk: Card processing firm Global Payments has provided more detail on the attack on its computer systems earlier this year, warning that the attackers may have had access to unspecified personal data.\nGlobal Payments confirmed the attackers had access to details of 1.5 million cards, but it said the attack had now been contained.\nGlobal Payments also revealed the attacks had gained access to servers containing personal information “from a subset of US merchant applications”. While it could not ascertain whether the data had been copied, it would be notifying affected customers in the coming days.\n","tags":["hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"1.5 Million Records Compromised In Global Payments Breach"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-14T11:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/14/linkedin-spam-exploits-and-zeus-a-deadly-combination/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Is this the perfect recipe for a cybercriminal ?:\nHacking LinkedIn’s password (and possibly user-) database. Sending an email to all obtained email addresses, which is urging you to check your LinkedIn inbox as soon as possible. A user unawarely clicking on the link. An exploit gets loaded. Malware gets dropped. Malware gets executed. User’s computer is now a zombie (part of a botnet). I would definitely say YES.\nA reader of my blog contacted me today, he had received an email from LinkedIn which was looking phishy. We can verify that Step 1 is accomplished, by the simple fact that in the “To” and/or “CC” field of the email below, there are about ~100 email addresses. A quick look-up of a few of them on LinkedIn reveals the unconvenient truth…\nHere’s the email in question:\n","tags":["attack","exploit","link","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"LinkedIn spam, exploits and Zeus: a deadly combination ?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-14T08:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/14/microsoft-revises-its-certificate-management/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: In response to the Flame worst-case scenario, Microsoft has now integrated a custom block list feature for its certificate store under Windows. The feature was deployed as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday. The Flame worm had spread via Windows Update feature by manipulating the certificates that were intended to protect Windows updates from tampering.\nAs described in a Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) blog post, the latest modification automatically causes compromised certificates to be regarded as untrusted. To achieve this, the certificate store checks a Microsoft-maintained list on a daily basis for certificates that are no longer trustworthy. Certificate Authorities are required to inform the company of any revoked certificates, which will then be added to the list. According to a Windows PKI blog post, this method is considerably faster than the deployment of Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs).\n","tags":["certified","Microsoft","report"],"title":"Microsoft revises its certificate management"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-14T08:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/14/critical-holes-closed-in-microsofts-june-patch-tuesday/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Microsoft has released seven security bulletins fixing a total of 27 security holes, 13 of them in Internet Explorer. The rest of the patches affect all currently supported Windows versions, the .NET Framework, Remote Desktop, Lync and Dynamics AX. A patch that had been announced for Visual Basic for Applications has yet to be released.\nThe most important updates are bundled in the cumulative Internet Explorer patch (MS12-037), which includes fixes for the holes that were targeted by Pwn2Own exploits. Microsoft is the last of the companies to close the exposed holes that were targeted during the Pwn2Own competition; Google and Mozilla fixed their browsers in March. According to Michael Kranawetter, Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor in Germany, the IE patch also affects the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and therefore Internet Explorer 10.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Security","Updates","Windows"],"title":"Critical holes closed in Microsoft's June Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-14T07:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/14/google-closes-persistent-xss-holes-in-gmail/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-online: Google has closed several cross-site scripting (XSS) holes in its Gmail email service – which has more than 350 million active users – that could have allowed an attacker to inject a malicious client-side script into a victim’s system. Security researcher Nils Juenemann discovered the three different XSS vulnerabilities in Gmail and disclosed them to Google’s Security Team as part the company’s Vulnerability Reward Program, in which researchers are rewarded with up to $20,000 for reporting qualifying bugs in its web-based services.\n","tags":["Google","Gmail","Updates","XSS"],"title":"Google closes persistent XSS holes in Gmail"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-06-11T17:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/11/does-the-silence-get-lonely/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Well I wish there was someone\nWell I wish there was someone\nTo love me\nWhen I used to be someone\nAnd I knew there was someone\nThat loved me\nAs I sit here frozen alone\nEven ghosts get tired and go home\nAs they crawl back under the stones\nAnd I wish there was something\nPlease tell me there’s something better\nAnd I wish there was something more than this\nSaturated loneliness\n","tags":["Video"],"title":"Does the silence get lonely?"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-06-10T16:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/10/i-dont-want-to-hear-about-flowers-i-like-death-and-destruction/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I can’t stand to let them win, I’m just watching them, And I don’t know what to do, Feeling like a fool inside, Feeling all the hurt… Thought they were my friends. Never mind…\nLet’s talk about something else, What super-power you wished in your life to have? I mean something like Time-travel, going invisible, mind-reading, unlimited body strength etc.., Mine is going invisible, always I wished I could be like that, going invisible and see so much things that I never can see and hear now. Going invisible and see what people say about me when I’m not there, going and invisible and then go into peoples life to see how much different they when they are alone in compare to when they are with us, going invisible and then go beyond the allowed borders to see what’s in the other side that we are not allowed to see, going invisible to get rid of all of the eyes watching me.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I don't want to hear about flowers, I like death and destruction"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-09T12:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/09/sandboxed-flash-player-for-firefox-adobe-flash-update-closes-several-critical-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Adobe has announced the release of an update for Flash Player on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android 3.x and 4.x, and within its own AIR runtime. The update addresses several critical vulnerabilities which involve memory corruption, stack overflows, integer overflows, security being bypassed, null dereferencing and binary planting (DLL hijacking). All, except the security bypass, could lead to code execution.\nThe updates also include a number of security enhancements on various platforms. The Windows version of Flash Player now offers a production version of “Flash Player Protected Mode for Firefox” which brings a sandbox to the running of Flash, making it harder for attackers to get at other processes.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Sandboxed Flash Player for Firefox: Adobe Flash update closes several critical holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-09T12:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/09/password-leaks-bigger-than-first-thought/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: There have still been no official statements on the causes and extent of the recent password leaks at LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm. A credible source is now reporting that the published 2.5 million Last.fm MD5 hashes, for example, are just the tip of a 17 million hash iceberg. That iceberg has reportedly been circulating since summer 2011.16.4 million of these – 95 per cent – have, the source claims, already been cracked, a claim which, for unsalted hashes, is entirely credible.\n","tags":["advice","hack","report","review","Security"],"title":"Password leaks bigger than first thought"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-09T12:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/09/millions-of-last-fm-passwords-leaked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: A list with several million passwords belonging to users of the music community site Last.fm has been posted on the internet. The site owners have posted a statement saying that the company is investigating the leak and that all users of the service should change their passwords immediately. This is the third major compromise of a popular web site’s passwords in as many days.\nThe H’s associates at heise Security are in possession of a list containing approximately 2.5 million password hashes. Like the recently leaked data from eHarmony, these are unsalted MD5 hashes that are trivial to crack in today’s world of fast CPU and GPU hardware and specialised techniques such as using rainbow tables. At least one million of these hashes have already been cracked and the clear text passwords have also been posted on the internet. The hashes that were leaked from LinkedIn were generated using the SHA-1 algorithm.\n","tags":["advice","hack","last.fm","leak","Password","report","Security"],"title":"Millions of Last.fm passwords leaked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-06T16:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/06/linkedin-passwords-in-circulation/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Internet forums are currently circulating a list containing over six million password hashes which allegedly originate from LinkedIn. The passwords are being cracked collaboratively with about 300,000 passwords already published as plaintext.\nThe list contains pure SHA1 hashes with no name or email addresses. If decrypted, the passwords will not easily give access to an appropriate account. However, it is probable that the person who captured the hashes also has the corresponding email addresses. In an initial sampling, The H‘s associates at heise Security didn’t find any known LinkedIn passwords in the list, but with over 160 million members that doesn’t mean a lot. The already cracked passwords often contain “linked” or even “linkedin” in the form, for example, of “lawrencelinkedin”. This suggests that the passwords actually come from the LinkedIn social network. However, this has not yet been confirmed.\n","tags":["advice","alert","hack","LinkedIn","Password","report","Security"],"title":"LinkedIn passwords in circulation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-04T13:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/04/microsoft-revokes-certificates-used-to-sign-the-flame-trojan/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog Wrote:\nMicrosoft released Security Advisory 2718704 which revokes some certificated which apparently were used to sign the trojan Flame__.\nIn a blog post, Microsoft explains how they discovered that some components of the malware have been signed by certificates that allow software to appear as if it was produced by Microsoft. The certificates issued by the Terminal Services licensing certification authority, which are intended to only be used for license server verification, were also used to sign code and make it look like as if it was originated from Microsoft.\n","tags":["certified","Malware","Microsoft","software","Updates","Windows","Security"],"title":"Microsoft revokes certificates used to sign the Flame trojan"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-03T15:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/03/automated-skype-calls-and-fake-antiviruses/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"This is an old story back from September, 2011, but since recently I’ve seen users complaining about this, I want to share it again [Credit to NakedSecurity, SophoLabs]:\nYou may have received an automated call from a user who claim to be from Skype or somewhere which says:\nAttention: this is an automated computer system alert. Your computer protection service is not active. To activate computer protection, and repair your computer, go to [LINK]\n","tags":["Malware","scam","Skype","spam","Security"],"title":"Automated Skype calls and Fake Antiviruses"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-03T09:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/03/on-stuxnet-duqu-and-flame/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"F-Secure wrote:\nWhen we went digging through our archive for related samples of malware, we were surprised to find that we already had samples of Flame, dating back to 2010 and 2011, that we were unaware we possessed. They had come through automated reporting mechanisms, but had never been flagged by the system as something we should examine closely. Researchers at other antivirus firms have found evidence that they received samples of the malware even earlier than this, indicating that the malware was older than 2010.\n","tags":["Flame","link","Malware","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"On Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-06-03T08:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/03/firefox-13-final-is-available-for-download-link/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mozilla Firefox 13 is available for download on Mozilla FTP servers.\nVisual changes in this version is flatten buttons in toolbar, smooth scroll enabled by default, New Home Screen and a new look for New Tab page.\nDownload: Firefox Setup 13.0.exe [Mirror]\nMD5: 89bc2ab1a1fa1e2d989d1c551f2a6ddf\nSize: 15.8MB\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla","software","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 13 Final is available for download [Link]"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-06-01T20:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/06/01/this-depression-is-great/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"They told me look at everything positive, so I’m gonna do it: “This Depression is Great!”\nI believe many of the solutions advised by psychologist out there is kind of “fooling oneself” fooling and fooling, so many stupid things in a row to do best phantasy to make hell look beautiful for the person and make him believe everything is cool and be happy while he is in hell!, that’s the reason I never wanted meet one of them, they don’t know anything about your life and then they want to decide about your life and saying what’s right and what not.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"This Depression is Great"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-31T12:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/31/faq-flame-the-super-spy/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Copied from H-Online: Source\nThe spyware worm Flame is being billed as a “deadly cyber weapon”, but a calmer analysis reveals it to be a tool by professionals for professionals that doesn’t actually have that many new features compared to, say, the widespread online-banking trojan Zeus.\nWhat is Flame?\nFlame is the code name for a spyware program that is built to be very modular and which is also known as Flamer and sKyWIper. Flame was just recently discovered, and it will be some time before all of its components are analyzed. Anti-virus software companies estimate that Flame has infected about 1,000 computers, mostly in the Middle East.\n","tags":["Flame","Malware","review","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"FAQ: Flame, the \"super spy\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-31T12:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/31/painting-a-picture-of-w32-flamer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: The number of different components in W32.Flamer is difficult to grasp. The threat is a well designed platform including, among other things, a Web server, a database server, and secure shell communications. It includes a scripting interpreter which allows the attackers to easily deploy updated functionality through various scripts. These scripts are split up into ‘apps’ and the attackers even appear to have something equivalent to an ‘app store’ from where they can retrieve new apps containing malicious functionality.\n","tags":["Flame","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Painting a Picture of W32.Flamer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-30T20:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/30/googles-recaptcha-briefly-cracked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Hackers developed a script which was able to crack Google’s reCAPTCHA system with a success rate of better than 99 per cent. They presented the results of their research at the LayerOne security conference in Los Angeles last weekend; however, their demonstration was somewhat frustrated as, just an hour before the presentation, Google made improvements to its CAPTCHA system.\nOf the various CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) systems, Google’s reCAPTCHA is considered to be one of the most reliable for differentiating man from machine. By requiring users to enter visually distorted alphanumeric sequences, web service providers can, for example, ensure that their registration forms are not flooded by spam bots. Rather than trying to analyze these distorted characters, the script, code-named “Stiltwalker”, analyzed the audio version of the CAPTCHAs, which Google provides for individuals who are visually impaired.\n","tags":["Google","hack","News","Security"],"title":"Google's reCAPTCHA briefly cracked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-29T15:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/29/avast-software-blocked-its-services-for-embargoed-countries/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Petr Chocholous in response to Iranian users contacting avast saying they are unable to open website or update their antivirus said:\nAVAST Software a.s. is currently blocking access to port 80 (that effectively means websites and updates of avast! software) of its servers from following countries: Iran, Sudan, Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Burma/Myanmar. AVAST Software a.s. [and its subsidiaries/sister companies] must not provide any services in these countries because of policies and regulations that are applicable to AVAST Software a.s.\n","tags":["antivirus","Iran","News"],"title":"AVAST software blocked its services for embargoed countries"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-05-28T16:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/28/freedom-is-not-free-memorial-day/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”\n-Joseph Campbell\nPhoto: Wikipedia.org\n","tags":["events"],"title":"Freedom is not free: Memorial Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-28T15:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/28/text-message-provider-to-pay-out-for-android-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: UK regulator PhonepayPlus (fomerly known ICSTIS) has imposed a fine of £50,000 on a payment provider used for an Android malware-based fraud and forced it to reimburse customers’ losses. Last December, unknown perpetrators posted fake versions of popular applications on Google’s Play store (formerly the Android Market) which sent out expensive premium rate text messages.\nAccording to Android virus experts Lookout, the applications in question were based on the RuFraud malware and were customized to disguise themselves as 30-plus titles such as Angry Birds, Assassins Creed and Cut the Rope. These apps were downloaded an estimated 14,000 times, and sent out three premium rate text messages, costing £5 each, every time the user tried to open the app. Total losses to customers in the UK were estimated at £27,850.\n","tags":["fraud","Mobile","News","report","Security"],"title":"Text message provider to pay out for Android malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-28T14:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/28/flame-worm-iran-claims-to-discover-new-stuxnet-like-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Naked Security wrote:\nThe Iranian Computer Emergency Response Team (MAHER) claims to have discovered a new targeted malware attack attacking the country, which has been dubbed Flame (also known as Flamer or Skywiper).\nIn a statement, researchers say that they believe the malware is “a close relation” to Stuxnet, and claim that Flame is not detected by any of 43 anti-virus products it tested against, but that detection was issued to select Iranian organizations and companies at the beginning of May.\n","tags":["Flame","Iran","Malware","News","report","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"Flame worm – Iran claims to discover new Stuxnet-like malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-27T11:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/27/facebook-and-opera-facebook-browser-is-imminent/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Are you ready for a Facebook browser that integrates the social networking behemoth into your online life more than ever? That’s exactly what could be on the way soon, according to one report.\nA Friday Pocket-lint report cites a “trusted source” that Facebook wants to buy Opera Software — manufacturers of the Opera web browser, which claims more than 200 million users worldwide. The Facebook browser would include default menu bar plugins, further permeating Facebook into users’ general web experience, according to the report.\n","tags":["Browsers","Facebook","Opera","rumor"],"title":"Facebook and Opera: Facebook Browser Is Imminent"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-25T09:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/25/a-technical-analysis-of-adobe-flash-player-cve-2012-0779-vulnerability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft Malware Protection Center wrote:\nRecently, we’ve seen a few attacks in the wild targeting a patched Adobe Flash Player vulnerability. The vulnerability related to this malware was addressed with a recent patch released by Adobe on May 4th. On the Windows platform, Flash Player 11.2.202.233 and earlier is vulnerable. If you’re using vulnerable version, you need to update your Flash Player now to be protected against these attacks. We had a chance to analyze how the malware (sha1: e32d0545f85ef13ca0d8e24b76a447558614716c) works and here are the interesting details we found during the investigation.\n","tags":["analyze","link","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"A technical analysis of Adobe Flash Player CVE-2012-0779 Vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-25T09:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/25/yahoo-released-private-certificate-with-new-extension/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Yahoo! introduced a new “browser”, Axis, last night, both as a standalone application for iPhone and iPad and as a browser extension on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Axis is meant to offer faster, smarter searching using Yahoo’s services. Within hours of the launch, hacker and blogger Nik Cubrilovic posted on his blog that the Chrome extension came with a worrying extra, a Yahoo private certificate file which was used to sign the extension package and prove the package’s authenticity to the Google browser.\n","tags":["privacy","report","Yahoo"],"title":"Yahoo released private certificate with new extension"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-25T09:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/25/google-releases-security-update-for-chrome-19/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Google has announced an update to the stable version of Chrome, which brings the browser version to 19.0.1084.52 on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The update is a pure security update that does not include any new features – it closes nine vulnerabilities with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rating of “High” and fixes two problems labelled “Critical” as well as two “Medium” level issues.\nMany of the vulnerabilities are due to bugs in Chrome’s memory handling, such as out-of-bounds reads and use-after-free conditions, and Google points out that several of them were detected with their AddressSanitizer tool. Other bugs were fixed in Chrome’s PDF handling code and its V8 JavaScript rendering engine.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates"],"title":"Google releases security update for Chrome 19"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-05-24T20:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/24/sometimes-hate-is-not-enough/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I don’t know where to begin, Let’s get help from my friends and start by answering them.\n2 friends told me that I’m only talking of negative in my life and then asked me about positive things in my life, ok, that’s a fair question, but need some thinking to find if there are something positive.\nMaybe I’m missing many stuff, but I can recall that I have good cyber friends in my life which seems they care about me and it’s a good thing, maybe not all of them are who they claim to be but I’ve some good friends between them. I have a kind mother and a sister, I have a father, even though I have some words about my family. I’ve never been left hungry like the kids in Africa or I’ve never been attacked physically by my family, these are good things, see…! I tried to see positive things in my life.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Sometimes hate is not enough"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-23T12:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/23/windows-xp-in-update-loop/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Users of Windows XP are reporting more problems with recent automatic updates. Three security updates for .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.5 are at the center of the problem, labeled as patches KB2518664, KB2572073 and KB2633880 in Windows XP’s automatic update feature.\nOn affected systems, the installation of these patches proceeds without error but after a short time, the update service says it would like to install them again and will keep reinstalling the patches if allowed. Microsoft’s general advice in this situation is to reset Windows Update components, though it has yet to offer any specific advice. It is interesting to note that the three patches in question were not released on Microsoft’s official patch day.\n","tags":["report","Updates","Windows","Windows XP"],"title":"Windows XP in update loop"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-23T12:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/23/hackers-use-fake-facebook-cancellation-emails-to-deploy-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"H-Online: A new type of phishing strategy, which aims to trick unsuspecting users into installing a trojan by pretending to be an account cancellation request from Facebook, has been discovered by Sophos. The email messages link to a third party application on the site that will install a Java applet and then prompt the user to update their Flash player, but will actually deliver the trojan malware.\nThe email messages that are sent out claim to be from Facebook and state: “We are sending you this email to inform you that we have received an account cancellation request from you.” However, Facebook never sends such account cancellation confirmation messages via email. Users who want to cancel their Facebook account can do so by visiting facebook.com/deactivate.php to deactivate their account; they may later delete it after a cool down period has passed.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Malware","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Hackers use fake Facebook cancellation emails to deploy malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-21T14:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/21/fake-bbc-website-serves-exploits-and-work-from-home-offers/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"GFI Wrote: In September, our friends at Sophos wrote about a fake BBC website offering up the “chance” to work from home for predictably large sums of money. No more than a day later, we were covering fake BBC video posts targeting Facebook users.\nToday we’re looking at a fake BBC URL which drops the end-user onto a “work from home and earn $10,000+ a month” fake news site, but not before it’s attempted to load up the PC with malware via a rather nasty collection of exploits. The URL in question is bbcmoneynews(dot)com:\n","tags":["exploit","hack","report","review","Security"],"title":"Fake BBC Website Serves Exploits and Work From Home Offers"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-05-21T13:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/21/and-when-you-feel-like-this/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"No comment, The video and its feeling say it all\n","tags":["Video"],"title":"And when you feel like this"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-19T18:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/19/php-5-4-remote-exploit-poc-in-the-wild/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ISC Diary:\nThere is a remote exploit in the wild for PHP 5.4.3 in Windows, which takes advantage of a vulnerability in the com_print_typeinfo function. The php engine needs to execute the malicious code, which can include any shellcode like the the ones that bind a shell to a port.\nSince there is no patch available for this vulnerability yet, you might want to do the following:\nBlock any file upload function in your php applications to avoid risks of exploit code execution. Use your IPS to filter known shellcodes like the ones included in metasploit. Keep PHP in the current available version, so you can know that you are not a possible target for any other vulnerability like CVE-2012-2336 registered at the beginning of the month. Use your HIPS to block any possible buffer overflow in your system. Source: http://isc.sans.edu\n","tags":["exploit","PHP","Security"],"title":"PHP 5.4 Remote Exploit PoC in the wild"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-19T18:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/19/call-of-duty-hacker-jailed-after-meatspace-burglary/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"theregister.co.uk wrote:\nA Brit who distributed a Trojan horse that posed as a patch for popular shoot-em-up game_Call of Duty_ has been jailed for 18 months.\nLewys Martin, 20, of Deal in Kent, used the malware to harvest bank login credentials, credit card details and internet passwords from the compromised Windows PCs of his victims. Martin then apparently laundered the credentials via underground cybercrime forums, earning $5 or less for every credential, directing proceeds of his criminal activity towards an offshore account in Costa Rica, funds which remain beyond the reach of UK police.\n","tags":["Gaming","hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Call of Duty hacker jailed after meatspace burglary"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-17T15:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/17/the-pirate-bay-hit-by-ddos-attack/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" File-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) has been hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.\nThe site has been largely inaccessible for the last 24 hours, and the service is intermittent in the UK.\nThe Pirate Bay has confirmed the attack on its Facebook page, saying that it did not know who was behind it, although it “had its suspicions”.\nA provider of DDoS defense systems said that it was unlikely that the attack came from hacking group Anonymous.\n","tags":["attack","News"],"title":"The Pirate Bay hit by DDoS attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-17T15:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/17/avira-update-fixes-service-pack-bug/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Avira says that it has resolved the problems caused by a Service Pack that was released for its Windows products earlier this week. Users are advised to trigger a manual update to download the fix. Once installed, the update should prevent the program from blocking legitimate Windows applications on systems running Avira.\nOn Monday, Avira released “Service Pack 0” for all of its Windows products. Once the update was installed, the “ProActiv” behavioral monitoring component in Avira Antivirus Premium 2012 and Avira Internet Security 2012 blocked the execution of essential programs and trusted system processes. For example, ProActiv blocked the Windows registry editor (regedit.exe) and the task scheduler (taskeng.exe).\n","tags":["Avira","News","software","Updates"],"title":"Avira update fixes Service Pack bug"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-17T15:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/17/quicktime-for-windows-update-plugs-security-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Version 7.7.2 of QuickTime for Windows has been released to address a total of 17 security vulnerabilities in the media player. According to Apple, these include integer, stack and buffer overflows, as well as memory corruption issues, all of which could be could exploited by an attacker to crash the application or execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system. For an attack to be successful, a user must first open a malicious web site or a specially crafted file.\n","tags":["Apple","QuickTime","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"QuickTime for Windows update plugs security holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-17T15:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/17/realplayer-update-fixes-security-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: RealNetworks is warning users about multiple security vulnerabilities in its RealPlayer media player application for Windows; the company says that none of the, now fixed, holes are known to have been used to compromise systems.\nThe released update, version 15.0.4.53 of RealPlayer, closes three security holes. One hole is related to ASM RuleBook parsing that could be exploited by an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code, another is a memory corruption problem related to MP4 file handling in the QuickTime plugin used by RealPlayer, and the third is a buffer overrun in the Media parser.\n","tags":["RealPlayer","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"RealPlayer update fixes security vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-17T15:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/17/chrome-19-released-with-tab-syncing/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google has announced that Chrome 19 is the new stable version of its open source based web browser. As usual, the browser sees a number of security fixes: this time there are seven high-severity fixes specifically for Chrome including various use-after-free and out-of-bounds errors. Two fixes with a wider impact than Chrome are also mentioned – a workaround for a Linux NVIDIA driver bug and an “off-by-one out-of-bounds” write in libxml. In all, $7500 was paid out in rewards to security researchers, and Google notes it has also paid out $9000 to researchers to stamp out bugs before they reached its stable channel.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 19 released with tab syncing"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-05-16T22:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/16/i-dont-understand/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"A note before starting this post: I don’t mean to catch anyone’s attention with these posts I write, I just want to speak out what’s in my mind and hope someone who can understand me read it and answer it, one who really can see the world from same view I see…\nI don’t understand why world is this way, why it does not show us a good way and why live if everything is fucked up?\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I don’t understand"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-16T19:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/16/google-bringing-new-smarts-to-search-with-knowledge-graph/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google’s Knowledge Graph will display summaries of topics when your query is related to one of the 500 million items in Google’s new database of things.\nGoogle has long sought to index the world’s information — and it’s now taking things a step farther with an effort to create “a database of everything in the world.” And it’s bringing this effort to your search results pages.\nThe new Knowledge Graph project, rolling out to English-language Google Search users over the next few days, provides more data snippets alongside its query results than the search engine currently provides. The results are based on Google’s new database of 500 million people, places, and things, says Jack Manzel, Product Management Director of Search at Google. Manzel says there are 3.5 billion attributes and connections between these things in the database.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","News","Search"],"title":"Google bringing new smarts to Search with Knowledge Graph"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-15T14:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/15/avira-av-update-hangs-systems/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"H-Online Says:\nA faulty update for Avira‘s paid-for anti-virus software blocks harmless processes and may in some cases stop computers from booting. The update results in the ProActiv behavioral monitoring component becoming oversensitive in its treatment of executable files.\nAccording to user reports, ProActiv blocks trusted system processes such as cmd.exe, rundll32.exe, taskeng.exe, wuauclt.exe, dllhost.exe, iexplore.exe, notepad.exe and regedit.exe. In some cases this results in Windows failing to boot properly. It also appears to be blocking non-OS applications such as Microsoft Office, the Opera web browser and Google’s Updater program.\n","tags":["advice","Avira","News","report"],"title":"Avira AV update hangs systems"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-13T22:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/13/sniffer-tool-displays-other-peoples-whatsapp-messages/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: WhatsApp Sniffer is an app able to display messages from other WhatsApp users connected to the same network as the app user. The tool diverts all data traffic on, for example, a Wi-Fi network through the user’s smartphone and seeks out WhatsApp messages, which are transferred in plain text. All the user requires is a rooted Android smartphone.\nThe WhatsApp messaging service has established itself as an alternative to texting between smartphone users, because, unlike text messages, users only have to pay for data use. And if a user is in range of a free Wi-Fi point, then it is free to use.\n","tags":["Mobile","News","Vulnerability"],"title":"Sniffer tool displays other people's WhatsApp messages"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-05-13T21:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/13/i-want-to-say-something/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"I want to say something but I don’t know what, I want to talk, I want to speak but to no one, I want to express myself but no word is capable of doing that, I want to say whatever that comes to my mind but no ear can listen, I know there are people who are willing to help and offer me to listen to me but…\nDoes everyone have to listen to my complains? Complaining about everything and everyone, Do they have to listen to my words when you realize those are absolute nonsense, Yeah really nonsense because there are no thinking behind those words, those are just something to be said…\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I want to say something"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-10T09:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/10/microsoft-patch-tuesday-more-extensive-than-anticipated/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: As previously announced, Microsoft has released seven bulletins to close a total of 23 vulnerabilities on its May Patch Tuesday. The total number of bulletins belies the scope of the patches, however, as the combined update MS12-034 closes various holes in numerous products.\nThe reason for this is a critical hole in the code for processing TrueType fonts that was exploited by the Duqu spyware last year. The hole was closed in the Windows kernel on the December Patch Tuesday; however, Microsoft has since used a code scanner to track down the vulnerable code in numerous other components; among them is the gdiplus.dll library, which is used by various browsers to render web fonts.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Security","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows"],"title":"Microsoft Patch Tuesday more extensive than anticipated"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-06T12:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/06/excuse-me-graham-cluley/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hi,/ You may have noticed that part of my blog posts are copied from other source as I name them (and link them) in beginning of my posts, for example “Naked Security” (SophosLabs).\nJust today I noticed a message from “Graham Cluley”, one of the Authors in “Naked Security” blog which asked me to don’t re-post his articles.\nIn the past I had checked with many of my other sources and they have always gave me permission to share their articles as long as it comes with a link to the source too and I thought “Naked Security” blog follow same rule, but seems they don’t, no problem.\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"Excuse me, Graham Cluley"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-05T19:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/05/php-patch-quick-but-inadequate/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The updates to PHP versions 5.3.12 and 5.4.2 released on Thursday do not fully resolve the vulnerability that was accidentally disclosed on Reddit, according to the discoverer of the flaw. The bug in the way CGI and PHP interact with each other leads to a situation where attackers can execute code on affected servers. The issue remained undiscovered for eight years.\nThe best protection at present is offered by setting up filter rules on the web server. However, the RewriteRule workaround described on PHP.net is also, according to security expert Christopher Kunz, inadequate. He suggests a slightly modified form of the rule as an alternative.\n","tags":["PHP","Security","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"PHP patch quick but inadequate"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-05T19:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/05/adobe-flash-player-update-closes-critical-object-confusion-hole/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Adobe has released a security advisory relating to an object confusion vulnerability which allows an attacker to crash the player or take control of an affected system. Adobe says that there are reports of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild as part of targeted email-based attacks which trick the user into clicking on a malicious file; this exploit only targets Flash Player on Internet Explorer on Windows, though the vulnerability exists on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Android versions of the player.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Adobe Flash Player update closes critical object confusion hole"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-03T20:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/03/fake-google-iranian-domain-defaced-by-algerian-script-kiddies/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"TheHackerNews: Google got Pwned ? NO Few Algerian Script Kiddies try to spread fake rumors that they Hack and Deface the Giant Search engine “Google Iranian” domain http://www.google.co.ir/ . As the screenshot shown a Algerian flag on it and Page Titles : **“**H4Ck3D By vaga-hacker dz and DR.KIM”.\nAs mentioned by hacker, the team include hackers named : “V4Ga-Dz,Dz0ne,DR-KIM King-Dz,BroX0 aghilass elite jrojan password kha\u0026mix wasim -dz” . It is not confirmed that, either these are member from some Anonymous Hackers but they try to use Anonymous Hackers Tag line : We Dont Forget , We Dont Forgive, Expect Us! to get some publicity.\n","tags":["hack","Iran","report","review","Security"],"title":"Fake Google Iranian domain defaced by Algerian Script Kiddies"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-03T20:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/03/windows-live-is-dead-long-live-windows-live/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Cross-posted from BetaNews: In a blog post on Wednesday, President of Microsoft’s Windows division Steven Sinofsky announced the seven-year old Windows Live brand is being retired.\nDo not be mistaken, there are more than 500 million users of the various Microsoft services that fall under the general classification of Windows Live. They are alive and well.\nThe brand and the concept of Windows Live as a whole, however, is antiquated in this mobile-driven era, and Microsoft is finally halting the differentiation.\n","tags":["Announcement","Microsoft","Windows Live"],"title":"Windows Live is dead, long live Windows Live"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-03T14:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/03/firefox-websocket-bug-compromises-tor-anonymity/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The current versions of the Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) include a bug that makes it possible for information about visited web sites to leak out of the anonymising layer. On version 2.2.35-9 of TBB for Windows and version 2.2.35-10 for Mac OS X and Linux, the included version of Firefox does not send DNS requests over the Tor network if the browser is using the WebSocket protocol. This means that an attacker listening in on the connection will be able to identify the servers the user is visiting.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","Tor Project","Vulnerability"],"title":"Firefox WebSocket bug compromises Tor anonymity"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-03T14:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/03/iran-makes-its-own-anti-virus-software-would-you-buy-it/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: According to reports, Iran has started making its own anti-virus software.\nIt is said that experts from Shiraz Computer Emergency Response Team of APA (Academic Protection and Awareness) of Iran have been working on the project to help better protect the country’s digital defenses.\nOf course, Iran is no stranger to malware. It found itself thrust into the spotlight in 2010 when the infamous Stuxnet worm was widely reported to have infected industrial plants (including nuclear plants) in the country with the seeming intention to target and sabotage SCADA systems.\n","tags":["antivirus","Iran","News","Security"],"title":"Iran makes its own anti-virus software – would you buy it?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-03T11:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/03/ooni-maps-internet-censorship-on-a-global-scale/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Tor developers Arturo Filasto and Jacob Appelbaum have been working on a new tool they call the OONI-probe. OONI stands for Open Observatory of Network Interference and is designed to help map internet censorship across the global network. The open source tool gives users the ability to check their internet connection for censorship, selective bandwidth throttling, surveillance and other interferences. This data can then be shared freely with other users, creating a global overview of the state of censorship of the network.\n","tags":["Announcement","report","Tor Project"],"title":"OONI maps internet censorship on a global scale"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-03T11:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/03/phishers-offer-fake-storage-upgrades/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Customers of popular email service providers have been a common target for phishers for identity theft purposes. Phishers are constantly devising new phishing bait strategies in the hope of stealing user email addresses and passwords. In April 2012, Symantec observed phishing pages that mimicked popular email services in an attempt to dupe users with attractive storage plans.\nCustomers were flooded with fake offers of free additional storage space for services such as email, online photo albums, and documents. In the first example, the phishing site was titled “Welcome to New [BRAND NAME] Quota Verification Page”. According to the bogus offer, the additional storage plan ranged from 20 GB to 1 TB per year, at no extra cost. The phishing page boasted that the free additional storage plan will help customers prevent loss of data and the inability to send and receive emails due to exhausted storage space. It also stated that the plan will auto-renew each year and the customer can choose to cancel at any time by returning to the same page:\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Phishers Offer Fake Storage Upgrades"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-05-02T20:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/02/not-suicide-just-taking-life-easy/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I’m not going jump off from the tower, I’m not going to overdoes any drug, I’m not going to cut my Wrist, I’m not going to drive high speed against a wall without seatbelt (but I’ve to claim that’s fun if do it with a good music!), I’m not going to burn myself with gasoline, not drowning too, I’m not going to turn on my car in the garage with the doors closed, I’m not going to headshot myself (I don’t have a gun), I’m not going to lock myself in a very cold place, I’m not going to hug a high voltage wire, not hanging myself too, I’m not going to jump in front of metro, train or a car in highway…! no! I’m not going to suicide!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Not suicide, just taking life easy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-01T15:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/01/privacy-concerns-over-popular-showip-firefox-add-on/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Cross-posted from SophosLabs: A popular Firefox add-on appears to have started leaking private information about every website that users visit to a third-party server, including sensitive data which could identify individuals or reduce their security.\nNaked Security reader Rob Sanders alerted us to the activities of the recently updated ShowIP add-on for the Firefox browser.\nAccording to the description on the Mozilla add-ons website, ShowIP is designed to “show the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom information services by IP (right click) and hostname (left click), like whois, netcraft, etc. Additionally you can copy the IP address to the clipboard.”\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox Addon","Mozilla","privacy","review"],"title":"Privacy concerns over popular ShowIP Firefox add-on"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-05-01T15:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/05/01/chrome-18-update-closes-high-risk-security-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google has released a new update to the stable 18.x branch of its Chrome web browser to close a number of security holes found in the application. The update, labelled 18.0.1025.168, addresses a total of five vulnerabilities, three of which are rated as “high severity” by the company.\nThese include use-after-free problems in floating point handling and the XML parser; all of these bugs were detected using the AddressSanitizer. As part of its Chromium Security Vulnerability Rewards program, Google paid a security researcher by the name of “miaubiz”, who is number three in the company’s Security Hall of Fame, $1,000 for discovering and reporting one of the float handling problems. Two medium risk problems related to IPC validation and a race condition in sandbox IPC have also been corrected.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 18 update closes high-risk security holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-30T17:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/30/skype-divulges-user-ip-addresses/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: According to a blog post, a modified version of the Skype VoIP software can be used to easily find out the IP address of any valid Skype user. No contact has to be made with the user in order to get the information. This IP could then be used to find out other personal details about the user, such as their location or even their employer.\nWith a certain registry key, the manipulated version of Skype will create a log file with information including other users’ external and internal IP addresses. These IPs can be retrieved simply by opening up a user’s profile with the Skype client. In a test conducted by The H’s associates at heise Security, the log file always showed the correct IPs – and when a user was logged in with multiple clients, the IP addresses for all the clients were visible.\n","tags":["report","Security","Skype","Vulnerability"],"title":"Skype divulges user IP addresses"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-30T17:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/30/mozilla-to-auto-upgrade-firefox-3-6-users-to-version-12/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Soon, users running Firefox 3.6.x will start being automatically upgraded to the current version 12.0 release of the open source web browser. The plan to auto-update these users has been being discussed since the end of March, when Mozilla Release Manager Alex Keybl proposed the move on a Mozilla planning discussion thread.\nAccording to Keybl, Firefox 3.6.x users with updates enabled should start being upgraded in early May – the specific date has yet to be confirmed. The 3.6.x branch of Firefox, the first release of which arrived in January 2010, reached its end of life last week on 24 April; the last update to the 3.6 series was version 3.6.28 from early March.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla","software","Updates"],"title":"Mozilla to auto-upgrade Firefox 3.6 users to version 12"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-27T11:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/27/warning-fake-biophilla-app-on-android-is-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Corss-posted from ZDNet: Summary: Cyber criminals have created a fake Biophilla app for Android that is really just malware in disguise. Your first red flag should be that Biophilla is officially available on iOS, but not on Android.\nDuring April alone, we’ve already seen malicious versions of Angry Birds Space and Instagram in the wild. Both are Android apps that are really just malware designed to generate money from unsuspecting users by sending expensive international text messages. Now the same is happening with the popular Biophilla app.\n","tags":["alert","Android","Malware","Mobile","warning","Security"],"title":"Warning: Fake Biophilla app on Android is malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-27T10:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/27/dropbox-1-4-released/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"gHacks: Dropbox has just released a stable update that brings all desktop clients of the file synchronization and hosting service to 1.4. Feature-wise, it is not really a big change to previous versions, especially not so if you have been running experimental versions of the client before.\nWhen you look at the new feature set, you will notice that photo import from cameras, phones and SD cards is on top of that list. This is followed by a new batch upload and download option for files, and smaller cosmetic changes, like a fix for the missing camera upload icon on Mac OS X, or new tour screens for first time users.\n","tags":["Dropbox","software","Updates"],"title":"DropBox 1.4 Released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-27T10:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/27/php-5-4-1-and-php-5-3-11-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The PHP developers have released the first update for PHP 5.4, the latest version of their popular scripting language, and an update to PHP 5.3, the older stable branch of the language. The developers say “All users of PHP are strongly encouraged to upgrade” to the new releases.\nPHP 5.4.1 has more than 20 bug fixes, including some related to security. One security bug concerned insufficient validating of the an upload name, which then led to corrupted $_FILES indices. Another notable change was open_basedir checks being added to readline_write_history and readline_read_history.\n","tags":["PHP","software","Updates"],"title":"PHP 5.4.1 and PHP 5.3.11 released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-27T10:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/27/hotmail-hacked-for-20/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The whitec0de.com blog reports that, for $20, a member of a hacker forum offered to crack any Hotmail account within a minute – and that he kept his word. Apparently, the hacker found out about a critical vulnerability in Microsoft’s email service on a security forum, and the hole allowed him to change the passwords of arbitrary Hotmail users.\nThe blog says that various users were affected as a result, for example because they used their Hotmail accounts to access services such as PayPal. Allegedly, the vulnerability was also exploited to change the ownership of particularly attractive, short account names such as ab@hotmail.com and xxx@hotmail.com.\n","tags":["hack","Hotmail","News","report","Security"],"title":"Hotmail hacked for $20"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-04-26T20:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/26/no-this-is-not-a-love-song/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Did you ever try hard to reach someone and when you did you find your mouth shut? I did several times and it drive me crazy!\nThat’s not a nice feeling and I don’t know what’s the reason of this weakness, I hope its not what I think it may be.\nWell, “Low Self-Esteem” can be one of the reasons, But self-esteem itself can be affected by many other factors like environment, economic situation, personal factors like ‘culture’ or ‘look’, social position, education, intelligence, health etc.…\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"No, This is not a love song"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-26T15:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/26/get-ready-for-exciting-changes-coming-to-firefox-13-14-and-15/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":" Cross-posted from BetaNews: Following on from the release of Firefox 12 FINAL, Mozilla has updated its developmental branches to versions 13 (Beta), 14 (Aurora) and 15 (Nightly/UX), respectively. Those looking for major changes in version 12 will may be disappointed, but future builds promise a number of radical new features, including redesigned Home and New Tab pages, plus panel downloads manager and inline preferences screen.\nGet a head’s up on what’s coming and discover which build is best for your personal needs with our essential guide to what’s coming up in the near future for Mozilla’s open-source, cross-platform browser.\n","tags":["Announcement","Beta","Firefox","Mozilla","review"],"title":"Get ready for exciting changes coming to Firefox 13, 14 and 15"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-26T15:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/26/wikipharmacy-fake-notifications-spammed-out/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Symantec is intercepting a resurgence of spam attacks on popular brands. Spam messages that are replicas of the Wikipedia email address confirmation alert are the new vector for the present. The said spam messages pretend to be originating from Wikipedia, and are selling meds, with the following subject line: “Subject: Wikipedia e-mail address confirmation”.\nThe spoofed Wikipedia page is a ploy to give legitimacy to the sale of meds online. The embedded URL in the message navigates to a fake online pharmacy site that is dressed up as a Wikipedia Web page. Furthermore, to give the email a legitimate look, the spammer has added the recipient’s IP address in the body of the spam mail. Needless to say this IP does not belong to the user.\n","tags":["advice","alert","review","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"WikiPharmacy? Fake Notifications Spammed Out"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-26T14:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/26/security-improvements-in-opera-12-beta/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: A beta of version 12 of the Opera web browser has been released with privacy and security-focused improvements. Code-named “Wahoo”, the Opera 12.00 beta now runs plugins out-of-process and includes optimizations for better SSL handling. Running plugins in their own process not only improves the smoothness and stability of the browser but can limit the damage some plugin exploits can do. Privacy is enhanced with support for the “Do Not Track” (DNT) header, which is used to tell web sites that the browser user wishes to opt-out of online behavioral tracking.\n","tags":["Beta","Browsers","software","Updates"],"title":"Security improvements in Opera 12 beta"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-26T07:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/26/kaspersky-mac-security-is-10-years-behind-microsoft/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Cnet: Forrester’s CEO isn’t the only one spouting doom and gloom for Apple today.\nNow Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO of security firm Kaspersky Lab, says Apple is headed for a rough patch. However, this one’s in the world of computer security, and he says Apple is already getting into the thick of it.\nSpeaking to Computer Business Review at Info Security 2012 show in London this week, Kaspersky said that when it comes to computer security, Apple’s Mac platform was a decade behind Microsoft‘s, and that it’s got some things to learn from its rival.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Mac vs PC","Malware","Security"],"title":"Kaspersky: Mac security is '10 years behind Microsoft'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-25T20:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/25/online-forums-hacked-and-misused-on-a-large-scale/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Online forums have, for some time, apparently been the target of hackers who inject additional code. However, the attackers aren’t interested in publishing cool slogans or political messages, they’re looking for money. They steal Google traffic from the forums and exploit this traffic via ads. Their main targets appear to be forums that are based on the vBulletin software.\nUnlike the “Look how cool I am” crackers, these attackers have very discreet working methods. They hide their code deeply within the system and ensure that their redirections don’t attract much attention. Only users who visit forum pages for the first time via a search engine such as Google are redirected to a url123.info URL. This site initially displays a strange blocking alert (“Access denied”) followed by some arbitrary text and then loads a full-page ad by InfinityAds. The ads are probably a direct source of income for the intruders even though each ad is only worth a few pennies. However, as some forum operators have reported that their traffic has dropped by more than 70 per cent, and the phenomenon seems to be a rather wide-spread one, the overall yield is likely to be considerable.\n","tags":["advice","forum","hack","report","Security"],"title":"Online forums hacked and misused on a large scale"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-25T20:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/25/facebook-teams-up-with-security-vendors/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook and security. Is it a marriage that has any legs?\nThe social networking giant today announced its partnership with a number of security vendors.\nA Facebook blogger writes:\nNothing is more important to us than the safety of the people who use Facebook, and the security of their data...That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the Antivirus Marketplace and welcome Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec to the Facebook Security family.\n","tags":["Facebook","Security"],"title":"Facebook teams up with security vendors"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-25T09:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/25/microsoft-security-essentials-4-0-ready-for-download/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Cnet: Microsoft today made available for download a new release of its free anti-virus/anti-malware program for Windows PCs, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).\nThe MSE 4.0 release is available via the Microsoft Download Center and the MSE Web site. (I learned of its availability from a post on Neowin today.) The latest version runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.\nThe 4.0 version has been in beta since late 2011. As ZDNet sister site TechRepublic reported back in December 2011, Microsoft officials said the 4.0 release would include a streamlined interface; a renamed version of the SpyNet service (now slated to be known as Microsoft Active Protection Services); new automatic remediation functionality; and overall improved performance and detection capabilities.\n","tags":["Announcement","Microsoft","Security Essentials","Updates"],"title":"Microsoft Security Essentials 4.0 ready for download"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-24T17:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/24/introducing-google-drive-yes-really/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross-Posted from Official Google Blog: Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist.\nToday, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","Google Drive","News"],"title":"Introducing Google Drive… yes, really"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-24T17:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/24/fake-discount-cards/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Symantec Connect: Phishers are constantly developing new strategies in an effort to trick end users. In April 2012, phishers created sites spoofing the Apple brand with fake offers for Apple discount cards. In this phishing attack, customers were targeted by region: namely, the UK and Australia.\nThe phishing sites mimicked the webpage of Apple and prompted customers for their Apple ID. The phishing page stated the customer’s long-term loyalty toward the brand gave them eligibility for an Apple discount card as a reward. Upon entering an Apple ID and clicking the “Next” button, the customer was redirected to a page that asked for more confidential information:\n","tags":["advice","alert","scam","warning","Security"],"title":"Fake Discount Cards"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-24T16:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/24/iran-oil-terminal-suffers-malware-attack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The BBC is reporting that websites belonging to the Iranian oil ministry and national oil company are offline after suffering a malware infection this weekend.\nIran has disconnected all of its oil processing facilities as a precaution, including the facility at Kharg Island which processes more than 90% of Iran’s exports.\nThe semi-official news agency, Mehr, reported that information about users of the websites had been stolen, but no sensitive data had been accessed.\n","tags":["Iran","Malware","News","Security"],"title":"Iran oil terminal suffers malware attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-23T19:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/23/firefox-and-thunderbird-12-are-out-download-now/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla has released new final versions of Firefox 12 and Thunderbird 12, its open source browser and email messaging tools. Neither update, despite the new version number, contains much in the way of exciting new features, but developments on future builds suggest version 13 could be a landmark release for both.\nFirefox 12 introduces one notable change for Windows users — the advent of silent updates with no User Account Control dialog getting in the way, while Thunderbird 12’s headline new feature is the ability to view message extracts in global search results.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","software","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Firefox and Thunderbird 12 are out, Download now!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-23T19:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/23/adobe-creative-suite-6-takes-to-the-cloud/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Cross-posted from BetaNews.com: Adobe took the wraps off Creative Suite 6 on Monday, introducing the largest release to date of the content-creation platform. CS6 now includes up to 12 programs and two companion applications, Bridge and Encore, and is available in four editions: Design Standard, Design and Web Premium, Production Premium, and Master Collection.\nThe CS6 beta is one of the most successful in the company’s history, with one million downloads over the past month of availability alone, a record for Adobe. The move was slightly unusual considering the company typically does not offer large-scale betas of its products.\n","tags":["Adobe","review"],"title":"Adobe Creative Suite 6 takes to the cloud"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-23T19:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/23/img0893-zip-your-photo-all-over-facebook-naked-malware-campaign-spammed-out/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs is intercepting a spammed-out malware campaign, pretending to be an email about a revealing photo posted online of the recipient.\nThe emails, which have a variety of subject lines and message bodies, arrive with an attached ZIP file (IMG0893.zip) which contains a Trojan horse.\nSubject lines used in the spammed-out malware campaign include:\nRE:Check the attachment you have to react somehow to this picture FW:Check the attachment you have to react somehow to this picture RE:You HAVE to check this photo in attachment man RE:They killed your privacy man your photo is all over facebook! NAKED! RE:Why did you put this photo online? ","tags":["Malware","review","spam","Security"],"title":"IMG0893.zip – Your photo all over Facebook? Naked? Malware campaign spammed out"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-23T18:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/23/ruby-1-9-3-update-fixes-rubygems-security-problem/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: The Ruby development team has published an update to the 1.9.3 series of its open source programming language to fix a vulnerability found in the RubyGems package management framework.\nThe maintenance release of the scripting language, labelled 1.9.3-p194, updates RubyGems to close a security hole that caused SSL server verification to fail for remote repositories. This has been addressed by disallowing redirects from https to http connections and by enabling the verification of server SSL certificates in an updated version of RubyGems, 1.8.23; more details on these issues are provided in the latest RubyGems History file. The developers encourage those who use https source in .gemrc or /etc/gemrc to upgrade as soon as possible.\n","tags":["Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Ruby 1.9.3 update fixes RubyGems security problem"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-23T18:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/23/wordpress-fixes-file-upload-security-problems/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: The developers of the popular open source blog engine WordPress have released a security update for the software. WordPress 3.3.2 fixes unspecified bugs in three external file upload libraries used in the software and other security problems with the application.\nThe bugs affect both WordPress’s current file uploading library Plupload as well as the SWFUpload and SWFObject libraries; these were bundled with older versions of the application and might still be in use by certain plugins on the current versions of WordPress. The developers did not go into detail about the specifics of the security holes but thanked three people from the WordPress community for responsibly disclosing them. Three more fixes address a privilege escalation in the blog engine’s multi-site system and two cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in the core components of WordPress. More details on all of these patches and also some additional smaller fixes can be found in the change log.\n","tags":["Security","Updates","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress fixes file upload security problems"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-19T08:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/19/google-warns-the-operators-of-thousands-of-hacked-web-sites/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, announced on Twitter that Google has sent out a message to the webmasters of 20,000 sites informing them that their sites may have been hacked. In the email message, the company warns operators that the affected sites appear to be being used to redirect visitors to a malicious site.\nGoogle asks the site administrators to check the files in their web space for an eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,r) JavaScript code segment. The eval() function can be used to execute JavaScript character strings that may have previously been decrypted using an unpack feature. Google also warns of specially crafted .htaccess files. These may cause a file to be redirected only in certain circumstances, for example, when a visitor accesses the page via Google. Consequently, regular visitors to a site, such as the webmaster, will be unaware of the infection.\n","tags":["Google","hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Google warns the operators of thousands of hacked web sites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-17T21:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/17/please-support-my-friend-by-your-votes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hi Folks\nMy friend’s blog, Feldstudie.net, is now nominated as best blog in Technical category and he needs your support to with all hard competitors he has.\nPlease visit this link and choose FeldStudie as your nominee: http://www.hitmeister.de/superblogs/2012/technik/\nIf you use Facebook you can “Like” his page to stay up to date with his latest posts: https://www.facebook.com/Feldstudie\nThank you all for your support!\n-Omid\n","tags":["support request"],"title":"Please support my friend by your votes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-17T11:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/17/banking-system-vulnerability-3-million-bank-accounts-hacked-in-iran-updated/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"As I said in the other post, Iran’s Central Bank has announced that the electronic information of 3 million customers of 10 Iranian banks have been compromised. These banks now require their customers to change their ATM pin numbers before they can access their account. This has caused a rush to the ATM machines by the worried customers.\nThe hacker was identified as Khosro Zare’, a former bank-system specialist in Iran who recently left the country. Zare’ claimed in a blog that he hacked the PIN codes to highlight the vulnerability of Iran’s banking system.\n","tags":["follow up","hack","Iran","report","Security"],"title":"Banking System Vulnerability – 3 million bank accounts hacked in Iran [Updated]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-15T21:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/15/sabpab-new-mac-os-x-backdoor-trojan-horse-discovered/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: More malware for the Mac OS X platform has been discovered, hot on the heels of the revelation that some 600,000 Macs had been infected in the Flashback attack.\nAnd just like Flashback, the new Trojan doesn’t require any user interaction to infect your Apple Mac.\nThe Sabpab Trojan horse exploits the same drive-by Java vulnerability used to create the Flashback botnet.\nThe newly discovered Sabpab malware is in many ways a basic backdoor Trojan horse. It connects to a control server using HTTP, receiving commands from remote hackers as to what it should do. The criminals behind the attack can grab screenshots from infected Macs, upload and download files, and execute commands remotely.\n","tags":["Mac OS X","Malware","News","report","Security"],"title":"Sabpab, new Mac OS X backdoor Trojan horse discovered"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-15T17:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/15/hacker-divulges-data-on-10-iranian-banks-central-bank-warns-clients-updated/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" An Iranian hacker published the information about some 3 million debit cards of 10 Iranian banks, including codes and passwords.\nThe information has been published by someone named “Khosrow Zare Farid” who was the manager of a company which operates SHETAB payment network in Iran and produces and installs POS devices.\n“Around one year ago I found a critical bug in the system. Then I wrote and sent a formal report to all the CEO of banks in Iran but none of them replied to me. Now I decided to publish the information. Governments tried to catch me by Iran Cyber Army but they failed,” he said, according to Kabir News website\n","tags":["business","hack","Iran","News","report","Security"],"title":"Hacker divulges data on 10 Iranian banks, central bank warns clients [Updated]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-15T17:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/15/malware-blocks-booting/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Anti-virus experts at Trend Micro have discovered ransomware which blocks systems from booting. In contrast to the localised trojans, which are widely spread around Europe, it does so by inserting itself into the master boot record (MBR). It then restarts the system and instructs the user to pay a ransom of 920 Ukrainian hryvnia (equivalent to about 90 euros) to the criminals via payment service QIWI.\nIf victims pay up, the criminals send them a code to unlock their computers. Users can, however, save themselves 920 hryvnia by following the experts’ instructions for removing the infection. This essentially consists of running the recovery console from the Windows Installation DVD and restoring the original MBR using the fixmbr command.\n","tags":["Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Malware blocks booting"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-13T12:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/13/apple-releases-java-update-with-flashback-removal-tool/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: As expected, Apple has released an updated version of the Java implementation for its Mac OS X operating system that includes a removal tool for the Flashback trojan. According to the company, the update, labelled “Java for OS X 2012-003“, finds and removes the “most common variants” of the malware which had infected approximately 600,000 systems using flaws in the previous version of Java.\nAdditionally, the new Java update for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion prevents Java applets from being automatically executed by disabling the Java web plugin by default. Users can re-enable the automatic execution of Java applets via the Java Preferences application (Applications ➤ Utilities ➤ Java Preferences). However, if the plugin detects that Java applets have not been run for “an extended period of time”, it will automatically disable applet support again.\n","tags":["Apple","Java","Malware","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Apple releases Java update with Flashback removal tool"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-12T19:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/12/android-malware-poses-as-angry-birds-space-game/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Android malware authors have seized an opportunity to infect unsuspecting smartphone users with the launch of the latest addition to the immensely popular “Angry Birds” series of games.\nSophosLabs recently encountered malware-infected editions of the “Angry Birds Space” game which have been placed in unofficial Android app stores.\nThe Trojan horse, which Sophos detects as Andr/KongFu-L, appears to be a fully-functional version of the popular smartphone game, but uses the GingerBreak exploit to gain root access to the device, and install malicious code.\n","tags":["Android","Malware","News","Security"],"title":"Android malware poses as Angry Birds Space game"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-12T19:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/12/security-vulnerability-in-nvidias-proprietary-linux-drivers-fixed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: A new version of NVIDIA’s proprietary UNIX graphics drivers for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD fixes a security vulnerability (CVE-2012-0946) that allowed attackers to read and write arbitrary system memory in order to, for example, obtain root privileges. To take advantage of the vulnerability, an attacker must have access permission for some device files – which, for systems with these drivers, is typically the case for users who can launch a graphical interface as 3D acceleration and some other features cannot be used otherwise.\n","tags":["Linux","nvidia","Security","Unix","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Security vulnerability in NVIDIA's proprietary Linux drivers fixed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-07T20:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/07/microsoft-and-adobe-to-address-critical-vulnerabilities-on-patch-tuesday/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The H-Online: The Tuesday after the Easter weekend, 10 April, is set to be a busy one for system administrators as Microsoft and Adobe have sent out notifications that they will both be issuing fixes for critical vulnerabilities in their products.\nMicrosoft’s April notification says there will be four critical advisories concerning Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET Framework, Office, SQL Server, Microsoft Server and Developer tools, which all lead to remote code execution. A fifth remote code execution vulnerability in Office is marked as important, as is a sixth information disclosure issue in Microsoft’s Forefront United Access Gateway. The critical bulletins will affect all versions of Windows, from Windows XP SP3 to Windows Server 2008R2. One critical bulletin for Internet Explorer covers IE 6, 7, 8 and 9\n","tags":["Adobe","Microsoft","software","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows","Security"],"title":"Microsoft and Adobe to address critical vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-06T20:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/06/russian-av-company-claims-600000-macs-infected-by-flashback-removal-manual/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: A Russian AV company, Dr. Web, says it has conducted research to determine the spread of the Flashback trojan on systems running Mac OS X and says that 550,000 systems are infected, mostly in the US and Canada. A later update raised that number to 600,000 and claimed 274 infected systems in Cupertino, California.\nDr. Web says it employed a sinkhole technique to intercept the bot installed by the newest Flashback trojan, and directed the bots to its own servers where it could analyse the traffic. Each bot includes a unique ID of the machine it has infected in the query string it sends to the command and control server; it is these unique IDs that Dr. Web has used to calculate the infection count. According to its estimates, of the original 550,000 estimate, 56.6% of the systems were in the United States, 19.8% in Canada, 12.8% in the United Kingdom and 6.1% in Australia.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Malware","News","solution","Security"],"title":"Russian AV company claims 600,000 Macs infected by Flashback [Removal Manual]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-04-06T20:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/04/06/google-chrome-fixes-seven-high-risk-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google has announced updates to the Stable and Beta channels of their Chrome browser, fixing several bugs and twelve security vulnerabilities. Seven of the twelve security fixes were classed as high-risk problems and Google paid a total of $6000 to the researchers who discovered the bugs.\nThe update also includes a new version of the bundled Flash Player. Adobe have revised the Flash Player advisory from the end of March to include fixes for a Chrome/Flash only pair of memory corruption issues listed as CVE-2012-0724 and CVE-2012-0725. Given that these issues only affect Chrome and Chrome manages its own update, it is unlikely that Adobe will be reissuing or updating the advisory or patches for other browsers and platforms.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Google Chrome fixes seven high-risk vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-31T20:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/31/mastercard-and-visa-payment-processor-compromised-up-to-10-million-cards-stolen/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Brian Krebs is reporting that MasterCard and Visa are warning member-banks of a payment processor breach that may impact more than 10,000,000 credit cards.\nIt is important to note that MasterCard and Visa’s own networks were not involved in the attack, it appears to be related to payment processor Global Payments.\nReuters is reporting that Global Payments stock was suspended for trading after falling more than 9% on the Nasdaq stock exchange.\n","tags":["credit cards","hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"MasterCard and Visa payment processor compromised, up to 10 million cards stolen"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-31T20:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/31/google-updates-oauth-2-0-playground/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Google has added new features to its OAuth 2.0 Playground, which it launched last November. Developers can now switch to using client-side flow, and the system has added support for APIs that use OAuth 2.0 drafts 10 to 25. Google has also added a feature that makes it easy to see all available API operations supported by the user’s current access token. To make it easier to use the Playground for an extended amount of time, developers now have the ability to refresh their access tokens automatically, and clicking HTTP response links will now populate the request URI field.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","News","Security"],"title":"Google updates OAuth 2.0 Playground"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-29T18:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/29/sex-appeal-meter-scam-and-execution-hoax-abound-on-facebook/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Cross posted from GFI, Sunbelt Blog:\nThere’s not a day when we don’t see a new scam or hoax—yes, even the old ones—being proliferated on Facebook. I’ve seen both today. Let’s take a quick look at each one, shall we?\nFirst off, the scam:\nThe screenshot above is a post generated by the “Sexappeal Meter” app that have spread within the social network. Clicking the “How much Sexappeal you have” link, or sometimes a bit.ly shortened URL, leads users to a page where it requests for permission just like any normal app. Allowing the app access to user profile, however, leads to two succeeding survey scam pages and, eventually, to a page where one can download a browser toolbar.\n","tags":["advice","alert","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Sex Appeal Meter Scam and Execution Hoax Abound on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-29T15:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/29/free-stuff-on-social-networks-not-free/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: In recent years, scammers have flocked towards social networking sites as they have grown and made it easier to access a large number of potential eyeballs to convert into dollars. Brands have found value in leveraging social media to know what their customers are talking about, so, naturally, scammers are doing the exact same thing.\nFree iPads and iPhones\nEvery time Apple unveils a new iPad or iPhone, you can bet there are scammers out there trying to leverage the announcement for financial gain. In the days leading up to and after the announcement of the new third-generation iPad, Twitter users who tweet about the new tablet most likely will receive some targeted Twitter replies from scammers offering the new device for free:\n","tags":["advice","alert","review","scam","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Free Stuff on Social Networks Not Free"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-29T15:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/29/please-do-not-take-down-the-sality-botnet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The H-Security: On Tuesday, a user who is known as “lawabidingcitizen” posted an unusual request to the Full Disclosure mailing list, a forum that is mainly used by the security community: “Please do not take down the Sality botnet.” The contributor says that he found a way of dramatically reducing the number of infected computers after analysing the botnet. He adds that the required actions are unlawful, however, but proceeds to describe the method in considerable detail and makes special tools for the task available.\n","tags":["Malware","News","report","Security"],"title":"\"Please do not take down the Sality botnet\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-29T14:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/29/adobe-flash-enables-auto-updating-while-patching-two-critical-flaws/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Adobe released Flash Player version 11.2.202.228 for Windows, OS X and Linux today. In my view this is a milestone release as it finally introduces an automatic, silent updating mechanism to help users stay current with the latest releases from here forward.\nGoogle Chrome users may consider themselves spoiled, as they have been enjoying the worry-free joy of automatic updating of both their browser and integrated plugins like Flash Player for quite some time.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe Flash enables auto-updating while patching two critical flaws"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-29T14:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/29/chrome-18-improves-graphics-performance-closes-security-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has released version 18 of Chrome, the company’s own extended version of the open source Chromium web browser. The new Stable channel release, labeled 18.0.1025.142, fixes several security vulnerabilities, and improves graphics and drawing performance on systems with capable hardware.\nThis is done by adding support for GPU-accelerated rendering of 2D Canvas content on Windows and Mac OS X systems. According to the developers, the GPU acceleration should improve the overall performance of graphics-intensive web applications, making canvas-based animations and games “run faster and feel smoother”. For older systems that can’t make use of of the GPU, Chrome can now display 3D content using the SwiftShader software rasterizer, which Google licensed from TransGaming, Inc. However, the developers note that “a software-backed WebGL implementation is never going to perform as well as one running on a real GPU, but now more users will have access to basic 3D content on the web”.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 18 improves graphics performance, closes security holes"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-03-26T22:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/26/ive-some-new-toys/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Hey Guys!\nLast month has been a good one for me, I could get some new toys for myself and that’s good, I’ve not completed my todo list (or shopping list), but some important one is done.\nHere is some of them:\nA new phone: HTC Wildfire S, I like it, not a very powerful one but its doing the job I need, let me access my messenger and emails and also have my dropbox and evernote with myself. A new multifunction printer: HP OfficeJet 4500 Wireless, it looks good, not a speedy printer or professional quality prints, but it connects wirelessly to my router and everyone at home can use it for scan/print/copy or fax. A new external DVD-writer: Not best choice I had, but I did, a portable Samsung DVD-Writer, I think a non-portable could be a better choice, but now I’ve bought it and gonna see how it works! A new USB Hub: D-Link 7-Port USB Hub, really these days 4 USB port is not enough and this one has been something essential for me, now I can connect all my stuff in same time! (music player, external hard drive, external DVD-RW, phone etc) Yeah, those are some of the my new toys, but in the future I will be looking for a new monitor, an external sound card and some other gadgets, Do you have any suggestion which model and brand is best? Let me know!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I’ve some new toys"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-26T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/26/report-ios-vulnerability-sold-for-250000/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The H-Security: Business appears to be booming for those who trade in unpatched (zero-day) security holes: according to a report by Forbes magazine, a US company that works for the US government recently paid $250,000 for a vulnerability in Apple’s iOS operating system.\nThe report says that the deal was arranged by a hacker who goes by the name of “the Grugq” and who has brokered agreements between those who discover vulnerabilities and government agencies over the last year. If negotiations are successful, the hacker retains a 15 per cent commission; he’s reportedly on track to earn about a million US dollars this year with his brokerage business.\n","tags":["Apple","business","iOS","News","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Report: iOS vulnerability sold for $250,000"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-25T20:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/25/instagram-sign-up-page-now-beckons-android-users/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: The day when Android users will first lay hands on the red hot photo-sharing app Instagram just got even closer. Late Saturday, a sign-up page appeared on Instagram’s website, inviting all those of the Android persuasion to sign up to be notified when the app is first available for that OS.\nThe company still isn’t saying when the long-awaited Android Instagram app will actually become available. But now, at least those eager to try out the free app can take some sort of action that brings them closer to Instagram.\n","tags":["Android","Announcement","Instagram","News"],"title":"Instagram Sign-Up Page Now Beckons Android Users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-25T20:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/25/pro-china-hackers-target-tibetan-activists-with-malware/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The Register: Pro-China hackers have started spoofing security firm AlienVault’s email address in spam messages in an attempt to infect pro-Tibetan recipients with malware.\nThe move follows days after the security tools firm warned that AlienVault about spear phishing attacks against a number of Tibetan organizations.\nThe spear-phishing messages relate to the Kalachakra Initiation, a Tibetan religious festival that took place in early January. The closely targeted messages – sent to organizations such as the Central Tibet Administration and International Campaign for Tibet – carry an infectious Office file attachment with a malware payload, a digitally signed variant of Gh0st RAT (remote access Trojan).\n","tags":["hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Pro-China hackers target Tibetan activists with malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-22T20:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/22/firefox-switching-to-encrypted-google-search/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: An inconspicuous “s” added to various ​lines of code in its latest nightly builds means that future versions of Firefox will send all search queries to Google in encrypted form. This means that instead of HTTP, the open source browser will use the HTTPS protocol, which encrypts traffic between the web site and browser using SSL. The nightly builds will feed through, over the next few months, until the feature is, most probably, in Firefox 14.\n","tags":["Announcement","Firefox","Google","Mozilla","SSL"],"title":"Firefox switching to encrypted Google search"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-22T12:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/22/embarrassing-security-failure-at-paypal/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Until just a few days ago, web sites belonging to the world’s largest online payment service contained a security vulnerability in a key component that could have been exploited by fraudsters to steal information from customers. PayPal fixed the vulnerability shortly after being notified of its presence by The H’s associates at heise Security. The eBay subsidiary was, however, unable to give any information on how such a serious security problem could have remained undetected.\n","tags":["News","PayPal","Security"],"title":"Embarrassing security failure at PayPal"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-22T12:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/22/chrome-17-update-fixes-high-risk-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Google has released version 17.0.963.83 of its Chrome web browser, a maintenance update that fixes issues with Flash games and closes several security holes. The Stable channel update addresses a total of nine vulnerabilities, six of which are rated as “high severity“.\nThese include an integer issue in libpng (the official PNG reference library), a memory corruption problem in WebGL canvas handling and a cross-origin violation related to “magic iframe”, as well as use-after-free errors in first-letter handling, CSS cross-fade handling and block splitting. One medium-risk invalid read in the V8 JavaScript engine and two low-risk problems related to WebUI privileges and unpacked extension installation have also been fixed.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Chrome 17 update fixes high-risk vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-22T12:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/22/new-dr-who-girl-jenna-louise-colemans-name-exploited-by-twitter-sex-video-scammers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Jenna-Louise Coleman has been unveiled as the new “Doctor Who” companion, joining the BBC TV time traveller in his TARDIS later this year.\n“Doctor Who” is one of Britain’s biggest television shows, and is popular elsewhere around the world, so it was no surprise to find 25-year-old actress Jenna Louise-Coleman’s name was a trending topic on Twitter today.\nUnfortunately, there are frequently mischief-makers, scammers and cybercriminals waiting to exploit a popular search term or hashtag.\n","tags":["Malware","scam","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"New Dr Who girl Jenna-Louise Coleman's name exploited by Twitter sex video scammers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-20T08:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/20/fileless-malware-installs-into-ram/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Exploit found in Russian adware invades process, doesn’t install files\nThe Register: Researchers at Kaspersky Labs have found malware which, unusually, does not install any files on its victims PCs.\nThe researchers aren’t quite sure how unusual it is, describing it as both “unique” and “very rare”, but no matter how scarce this type of malware is it does sound rather nasty as it “… uses its payload to inject an encrypted dll from the web directly into the memory of the javaw.exe process.” That mode of operation means Windows and MacOS are both affected by the exploit, which is hard for many antivirus programs to spot given it runs within a trusted process.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","News","Security"],"title":"‘Fileless' malware installs into RAM"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-19T08:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/19/apples-new-ipad-is-great-but-its-not-free-nor-called-ipad-3/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Only hours after the launch of Apple’s newest iPad we are beginning to see spammers trying to use the excitement over its release to ensnare innocent people into their scams.\nThe scammers are sending out emails with the subject “Where do we send your Free iPad 3, just Test \u0026 Keep! See details”. The email contains an image with the text “TEST \u0026 KEEP an iPad 3 FREE – Click here”.\n","tags":["Apple","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Apple's new iPad is great, but it's not free, nor called iPad 3"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-15T20:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/15/firefox-thunderbird-and-seamonkey-updates-fix-critical-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: In the latest round of updates of its suite of internet applications, Mozilla has detailed the security fixes in the Firefox 11 browser, Thunderbird 11 email and news client and SeaMonkey 2.8 “all-in-one internet application suite”. There are also fixes for the “enterprise” and legacy versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. These fixes include a correction to a memory error in Array.join() which had been fixed last month, but was exploited during the Pwn2Own contest by Vincenzo Iozzo.\n","tags":["Browsers","Email","Mozilla","Updates"],"title":"Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey updates fix critical vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-15T20:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/15/pidgin-im-client-2-10-2-closes-dos-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Version 2.10.2 of the open source Pidgin instant messaging program has been released. According to its developers, the maintenance and security update brings a number of changes and addresses two denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker to cause the application to be terminated.\nThese remote crashes are caused when the MSN server sends messages that are not UTF-8 encoded and also when some types of nickname changes occur in chat rooms using the XMPP protocol. Versions up to and including 2.10.1 are affected. Pidgin 2.10.2 fixes these issues and all users are advised to upgrade.\n","tags":["Messenger","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Pidgin IM client 2.10.2 closes DoS holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-13T14:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/13/digital-playground-porn-passwords-exposed-by-hackers/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: A group of hackers are claiming to have stolen the details of more than 70,000 users of the Digital Playground porn website.\nThe group, calling itself “The Consortium”, appears to have scooped up some 40,000 financial details (including credit card numbers, names, CCV numbers, and expiration dates) as well as the email addresses and passwords of 72,000 users.\nAccording to the hackers, who appear to be affiliated with the Anonymous movement, the sensitive information was not encrypted.\n","tags":["hack","Password","report","Security"],"title":"Digital Playground porn passwords exposed by hackers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-13T14:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/13/nude-heather-morris-pictures-hacker-blamed/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Heather Morris, famous for playing cheerleader Brittany in the popular “Glee” TV show, is said to be the latest celebrity to have had nude photos leak onto the web.\nThe naked pictures are alleged to have been stolen by hackers from the 25-year-old actress’s mobile phone.\nOf course, Heather Morris isn’t the first celebrity to have fallen victim to a nude photo hacker.\nNude photos and videos of Vanessa Hudgens, the star of “High School Musical”, surfaced on the net in 2011, after it was claimed the actress’s Gmail account was hacked.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","Security"],"title":"Nude Heather Morris pictures – hacker blamed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-13T14:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/13/scam-for-fc-barcelona-fans/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Phishers often choose baits with the motive of targeting a large audience. Using popular celebrities as bait is a good example. Phishers understand that choosing celebrities with a large fan base would target the largest audience and supply more duped users. This month phishers are using the same strategy but, instead of targeting a popular celebrity, they associated their phishing site with the popular FC Barcelona football club. FC Barcelona is the world’s second richest football club and has a large fan following. The phishing site, hosted on a free web hosting site, has since been removed and is no longer active. However, though phishing sites are frequently short-lived, internet users should be aware that other phishing sites using this or a similar template could easily be encountered in future.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Scam for FC Barcelona Fans"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-13T14:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/13/critical-vulnerabilities-in-xnview-fixed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Version 1.98.8 of the popular XnView image viewer and converter has been released to close security holes in the software. According to an advisory from security service provider Secunia, the update addresses three “highly critical” vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary code and compromise a victim’s system.\nThese include a stack-based buffer overflow caused by a boundary error when parsing a directory name while browsing folders such as those from an extracted archive file, and, a heap-based buffer overflow when processing image content using the FlashPix plugin (Xfpx.dll). A second heap-based buffer overflow caused when processing image data in Personal Computer eXchange (PCX) files has also been fixed. For an attack to be successful, a user must first open a specially crafted file.\n","tags":["Updates"],"title":"Critical vulnerabilities in XnView fixed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-13T14:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/13/safari-update-closes-security-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Apple has released version 5.1.4 of its Safari web browser for Windows and Mac OS X. According to the company, the maintenance and security update addresses more than 80 vulnerabilities. The update also includes includes various stability and performance improvements as well as fixes for other non-security related bugs.\nA majority of the security holes closed in 5.1.4 were found in the WebKit browser engine used by Safari. These include several cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-origin and HTTP authentication problems, as well as numerous memory corruption bugs that could be exploited by an attacker, for example, to cause unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Updates"],"title":"Safari update closes security holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-13T13:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/13/firefox-11-release-postponed-due-to-security-issues-updated/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: The Firefox team has announced that they are postponing the release of Firefox 11, originally planned for today, because of a security report which the team wants to evaluate to make sure the issue will not impact on their code. Jonathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s Senior Director of Firefox Engineering, also Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday security update, also scheduled for today, as a reason to hold back on releasing the new Firefox version.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","News","Security","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 11 release postponed due to security issues [Updated]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-10T16:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/10/phishers-dislike-facebook-timeline/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Phishers regularly introduce new types of fake applications with the motive of improving their chance to harvest user credentials. In February 2012, Symantec observed a phishing site recommending a fake application that allegedly removes “Timeline” profile for Facebook users. The phishing site was hosted on a free web hosting site.\nThe phishing site embedded the Facebook Timeline promotion video from YouTube, with the claim “Remove Timeline Now”. According to this phishing site, users will have their “Timeline” removed from their Facebook profile and get back their old profile page—only after they enter their login credentials. To make the fake application look more authentic, phishers added that it was protected by an antivirus product with the logo of the antivirus brand placed below the login form. After user credentials are entered, the phishing page redirects to a page which displays a screenshot from the Facebook Timeline promotion video. If users fell victim to the phishing site by entering their login credentials, phishers would have successfully stolen their information for identity theft purposes.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Phishers Dislike Facebook Timeline"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-10T16:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/10/microsofts-patch-tuesday-will-close-a-critical-windows-vulnerability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Next week’s Patch Tuesday sees Microsoft planning to publish a total of six bulletins, including one that addresses a critical vulnerability in all versions of Windows from Windows XP service pack 3 to Windows 7 service pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The rating means that the hole enables attackers to infect a system via the internet and inject malicious code. Other bulletins will address a privilege elevation flaw which affects the same span of Windows versions.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Windows","Security"],"title":"Microsoft's Patch Tuesday will close a critical Windows vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-09T21:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/09/facebook-scam-omg-i-just-hate-rihanna-after-watching-this-video/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Messages are spreading between Facebook users, claiming that members of the social network have lost all respect for popular songstress Rihanna after watching a video.\nHowever, if you’re careless enough to click on the link you will find yourself lured into a survey scam that attempts to earn affiliate cash for fraudsters.\nA typical message trying to tempt users into falling for the scam looks like this:\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Phishing","Malware","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Facebook Scam: OMG – I just hate RIHANNA after watching this video"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-09T21:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/09/this-time-the-bad-guys-want-your-tax-accountant/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"avast: While taxpayers are the regular target of springtime malware schemes, this year the bad guys are aiming for the accountants.\nA series of imposter emails are threatening recipients with the removal of their professional accreditation if they fail to respond promptly. The tax-phish appear to be from organizations such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants(AICPA), Better Business Bureau(BBB), and Intuit tax services.\nAfter clicking on the email, users are redirected through a hacked legitimate site to the final malware distribution center where their computer can download fake antivirus or another malware package selected by the bad guys.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"This time, the bad guys want your tax accountant"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-09T21:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/09/google-is-globally-switching-its-search-to-https-by-default/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google has announced on its Inside Search blog that it is enabling SSL encryption by default on its global search pages. The US site Google.com has been switching users to the secured HTTPS protocol since last year and now, to improve security and privacy for all its users, the company is rolling the behavior out to its international properties such as google.co.uk.\nAs is the case on the US site, this only affects users who are signed into their Google account when visiting the site. The company expects to roll out this feature to the different local Google search pages “over the next few weeks”. Google hopes that this move will encourage other companies to adopt SSL more broadly across their web sites as well.\n","tags":["Google","News","SSL"],"title":"Google is globally switching its search to HTTPS by default"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-03-09T14:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/09/i-need-your-help-for-paypal/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hi People!\nI need your help for restoring my PayPal account, as of Jan 2011 PayPal has limited my account and asking me verify some stuff which right now I cannot, Do you have any idea what I can do for this?\nClick on image to see full size:\nAs you see in the image, its asking me for a Photo ID and proof of address, Since I live somewhere of world that is affected by US Embargo law either of documents I send to them will be rejected and also result in blocking my account, so, Does any of you have an idea what I can do for this? every single idea from you will be welcome, share your ideas in the comments blow or send them to me via “Contact Me” link above this page.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I need your help for PayPal"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-08T11:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/08/dropbox-abused-by-spammers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Recently we noticed spammers abusing Dropbox, a popular cloud-based, file-hosting and synchronization tool, to spread spam.\nDropbox accounts have a public folder where files can be placed and made publicly available. This function is useful to spammers, as it effectively turns Dropbox into a free hosting site. Spammers have abused URL shortening and free hosting sites for some time. Dropbox also provides a URL shortening service, which spammers have also abused.\n","tags":["Dropbox","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Dropbox Abused by Spammers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-08T11:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/08/google-opens-a-pharmacy-its-spam-of-the-day/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Is Google really extending its online empire, and opening an online pharmacy?\nOf course not. So don’t believe spammed-out emails like the following:\nDo you notice how the spammers have changed the “o”s in Google to Cialis and Viagra tablets? Very creative.\nPart of the spam message reads as follows:\nWe've just launched a pharmaceutical interfaces for Google, as well as several new features that will improve the Google experience for the people buying pills and using pharmaceutical interfaces.\n","tags":["alert","Google","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Google opens a pharmacy? It's spam of the day"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-03-07T16:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/07/gout-hypothyroid-high-bp-and-bad-liver/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Today morning I had a meeting with my doctor, giving him test results I had taken last week. Good and bad news here.\nHigh Uric Acid beside High Triglycerides, High Total Cholesterol, High LDL and very low HDL is part of the stuff in the result.\nIn this test high Uric Acid is something new beside old problems, I’ve no idea what could be reason because I don’t takes that much meat or alcohol, but one of my BP meds could be the reason (Diuretics Meds, Read here how it can affect).\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Gout, Hypothyroid+, High BP and Bad Liver"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-07T12:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/07/panda-security-cleans-up-defaced-websites-after-lulzsec-arrest-revenge-attack/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs/NakedSecurity: With alleged Anonymous hackers belonging to the LulzSec group arrested and charged yesterday, and the startling relevation that prominent hacker Sabu had been working undercover for the FBI for months, hacktivists defaced a number of websites belonging to anti-virus firm Panda Security overnight.\nThe hackers changed two dozen pandasecurity.com subdomains to include a YouTube video, showing a pot pourri of Anonymous/LulzSec activity during 2011, and posted what appeared to be the username and password details of over 100 Panda employees.\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"Panda Security cleans up defaced websites after LulzSec arrest revenge attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-05T17:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/05/chrome-security-update-and-researchers-bonuses/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Google has released a new stable version of its Chrome browser. The update fixes seventeen high severity vulnerabilities and updates the bundled Flash player. Google referred users to Adobe for details of the Flash Player update, and as usual, revealed few details about the seventeen holes that it closed in the release. It did, though, say that the researchers earned between $500 and $3000 for their vulnerability disclosures.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome security update and researchers' bonuses"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-04T08:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/04/new-automated-sandbox-for-android-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ISC Diary: One of the things that I’ve been working on lately is building an automated malware analysis environment to handle Android malware similar to the one I built for Windows malware. I’m not quite there yet, but I was quite pleased to here about the new service being offered by the folks at Die Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. This is still a research project, so if you choose to use it, be understanding. Don’t expect 24×7 uptime and let’s try not to DoS them. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing how well it works and how the dynamic analysis will work once it is actually in production.\n","tags":["Android","link","News","sandbox","Security"],"title":"New automated sandbox for Android malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-03T20:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/03/hackers-had-full-functional-control-of-nasa-computers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BBC: Hackers gained “full functional control” of key Nasa computers in 2011, the agency’s inspector general has told US lawmakers.\nPaul K Martin said hackers took over Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) computers and “compromised the accounts of the most privileged JPL users”.\nHe said the attack, involving Chinese IP addresses, was under investigation.\nIn a statement, Nasa said it had “made significant progress to protect the agency’s IT systems”.\n","tags":["hack","NASA","News","report","Security"],"title":"Hackers had ‘full functional control' of Nasa computers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-02T21:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/02/new-privacy-guidelines-for-mobile-app-developers/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: This week has seen the annual Mobile World Congress event. For 2012, the giants of the mobile tech world are back in Barcelona to captivate the imagination of the tech press with their latest smartphone and tablet offerings.\nThe mobile industry trade show has certainly not disappointed. Announcements of smartphones with new quad core processors, phone cameras with huge numbers of megapixels crammed onto its sensor and 3 in 1 smartphone-tablet-netbooks have all provided much excitement.\n","tags":["Mobile","Mobile Applications","News","privacy","report","review"],"title":"New privacy guidelines for mobile app developers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-02T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/02/opfake-scam-targets-iphone-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect:\nThe Opfake gang has been targeting Android mobile devices, as well as Symbian, but that does not mean they are limiting their targets to these platforms. Where there is money to be made, they are willing to invest time and resources. This includes scams designed for iPhone users. We have come across a couple of Opfake websites that, while hosting malicious apps that Symantec detects as Android.Opfake, are also designed to perform social engineering attacks on iPhone users.\n","tags":["Apple","link","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Opfake scam targets iPhone users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-02T21:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/02/phishing-via-nfc/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"At the RSA Conference 2012, McAfee’s Chief Technology Officer, Stuart McClure, and several of his colleagues, have demonstrated a whole range of different attacks on mobile devices. For example, they demonstrated an attack on an NFC (Near Field Communication)-enabled smartphone: the attacker simply attaches a modified NFC tag to a legitimate surface such as an advertising poster. For their live demo, the researchers used a Red Cross donations appeal such as those seen at bus stops in various cities across Europe.\n","tags":["Phishing","report","review","Security"],"title":"Phishing via NFC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-02T21:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/02/android-smartphones-infected-via-drive-by-exploit/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" At the RSA Conference 2012, former McAfee executives George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch have presented a Remote Access Tool (RAT) that infects Android smartphones (version 2.2). They used an as-yet unpatched bug in Android’s WebKit browser to inject the malware. The researchers say that they bought the vulnerability information, and a range of other tools, on the black market. The finished exploit is based on 20 components that apparently cost a total of $1,400 on the black market.\n","tags":["Android","exploit","Google","Malware","Security"],"title":"Android smartphones infected via drive-by exploit"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-02T20:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/02/finally-a-long-time-requested-feature-is-here/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey Folks\nHow are you? I hope you will have a good weekend!\nMany of you have had sent me messages asking me how you can pay for my services, even that I offered all my services free of charge for everyone (and yet its free, and will be free), but since you requested it often, I made it available at my site for everyone from every side of world to pay, now you can go to “Payment Options” page and fill the form to receive the required info for your payments.\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"Finally a long time requested feature is here!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-01T07:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/01/free-ipad-3-it-doesnt-exist-beware-of-scams/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"It is widely anticipated that Apple will announce a new version of its iPad tablet computer in San Francisco on March 7th.\nAn invitation sent to journalists, inviting them to an event organized by Apple, has fueled speculation even further as it appears to show a close-up of someone using an iPad.\nCould it be the new iPad with a much lusted for improved display and souped-up processor? Only time will tell..\n","tags":["Apple","Facebook","scam","Social Media","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Free iPad 3? It doesn't exist! Beware of scams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-03-01T07:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/03/01/https-everywhere-reaches-2-0-comes-to-chrome-as-beta/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Version 2.0 of the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension has been released. Where possible, the add-on automatically redirects users to more secure HTTPS connections when they access certain web pages. HTTPS Everywhere 2.0 includes an optional “Decentralised SSL Observatory” feature that detects weaknesses in encryption.\nWhen the extension detects an encryption issue, such as weak keys, it notifies users that the site they are visiting may contain security vulnerabilities that could be used to for man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. “This is an extra level of protection that we encourage Firefox users to download, install, and use” said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Technology Projects Director Peter Eckersley.\n","tags":["Browsers","Extension","Security","SSL","Updates"],"title":"HTTPS Everywhere reaches 2.0, comes to Chrome as beta"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-29T13:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/29/pwn2own-google-offers-1m-in-chrome-exploit-rewards/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google is to offer up to a million dollars in rewards for Chrome exploits at the CanSecWest conference. Previously, Google has sponsored the Pwn2Own competition which is held at CanSecWest, but has decided that this year it will directly reward exploits.\n“We discovered that contestants are permitted to enter Pwn2Own without having to reveal full exploits (or even all of the bugs used!) to vendors” says Google in a blog post. In previous years, full details have been handed over, but the revised rules make it “an explicit non-requirement in this year’s contest” – a change that Google calls “worrisome”. The organizers revised the rules to make the contest “more fair” and “more of a competition”.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","News","Security"],"title":"Pwn2Own: Google offers $1M in Chrome exploit rewards"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-28T21:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/28/oops-selena-and-biebers-hidden-camera-bedroom-video-facebook-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Oops indeed. At least if you were one of the Facebook users who believed that a hidden camera video had leaked onto the net of Justin Bieber sharing some intimate moments with his girlfriend Selena Gomez.\nOf course, Bieber’s typical fans – or those who would delight in his public humiliation by a hungry paparazzi – are probably unlikely to think twice about clicking on a link shared with them by their Facebook friends, claiming to leak to a sex video.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Oops! Selena and Bieber's hidden camera bedroom video Facebook scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-27T14:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/27/beatles-for-sale-its-spam-of-the-day/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" I’ve owned up to some of the great loves of my life in the past.\nFor instance, I’m a music lover and I’m very partial to board games (even during a denial-of-service attack).\nToday I can also share that I like The Beatles. In particular, anything from “Rubber Soul” and later when the “Yeah yeah yeah” turned into something rather more “Yeah man. Dig it”.\nI’ve simply never come across a more talented combination of musicianship and songwriting abilities – for me, you can kick The Stones, The Who, Cream and.. yes.. even MeatLoaf to the kerb, as Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr are the guv’nors.\n","tags":["alert","Music","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Beatles for Sale? It's spam of the day"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-02-26T20:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/26/nothing-last-forever-but-still-i-miss-you/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Finally first level of my German class at Goethe-Institut finished (Read here when it begin) and I’m so sad, I will miss all my great classmate and teacher, we have been a great group, really a perfect group together and it was not easy to say Bye.\nI passed the A1.1 level with “satisfactory” score (Evaluation), yeah I know I could do better but… I will try to practice at home too for the next level.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Nothing last forever, but still I miss you"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-24T11:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/24/google-drive-will-support-third-party-apps/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google Operation System Blog: Back in November 2010, a comment from the Google Docs source code revealed some new features that will be available: third party apps, Cloud Print integration and sync.\nIt turns out that the upcoming Google Drive release will add support for third party apps and Google will also include a SDK for developers. This way, you’ll be able to open the files stored in Google Drive using non-Google apps. The Google Docs source code mentions “SDK” several times in connection with Google Drive and the “open with” feature.\n","tags":["Google","Google Docs","Google Drive"],"title":"Google Drive Will Support Third Party Apps"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-23T17:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/23/twilight-authors-official-website-attacked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Sunbelt: Twilight fans who normally frequent the official website of Stephenie Meyer, infamous writer of the said book and saga, may have found their systems captured by a “being” that is neither a blood-sucker or a giant, feral dog. It might be something supernatural, but not in the security world: zombies.\nOur friends at avast! have unearthed a recent attack on the author’s website not so long ago:www.stepheniemeyer.com had been hosting Crimepack, an exploit kit that takes advantage of known vulnerabilities of various Web browsers and the Windows OS to install malware. Brian Krebs of_KrebsOnSecurity.com_ took a closer look at this particular exploit pack back in 2010, and it is indeed a nasty one. Not only is it capable of targeting holes of software installed on your system, it also “lets customers [buyers of this Crimepack exploit kit] test various Web reputation services to discover whether any include their exploit sites.” Computers successfully exploited by the Crimepack exploit kit are eventually turned into zombies, which online criminals use to do malicious tasks, such as spamming and launching denial of service (DoS) attacks.\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"Twilight author’s official website attacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-23T08:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/23/youporn-passwords-available-for-download-thousands-of-users-exposed-updated/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Want a free password for one of the world’s most popular adult websites?\nYouPorn, one of the world’s most popular porn video websites and one of the top 100 websites of any kind in the world, appears to have been caught with its pants down – after a list of many of its users’ email addresses, passwords and dates of birth were left exposed on a public-facing server.\n","tags":["alert","hack","News","Password","report","Security"],"title":"YouPorn passwords available for download, thousands of users exposed [Updated]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-21T20:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/21/fake-aicpa-mail-serves-blackholes-and-rootkits/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sunbelt: Be wary of emails claiming to be from AICPA – as per their alert here, these are not real and any mention of “unlawful tax return fraud” is just a bait to convince the end-user to open up a malicious attachment (in this case, a .doc file although there are rogue PDF files in circulation too).\nAs with many of the malicious spam campaigns doing the rounds at the moment, this one will use the Blackhole exploit kit to serve up zbot from multiple compromised domains. Worse, a Sakura kit (typical example here) will download Sirefef / ZeroAccess , which as we’ve seen elsewhere is not a good thing to have on your system.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"Fake AICPA Mail Serves Blackholes and Rootkits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-21T19:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/21/%d0%bc%d0%b0%d1%81%d0%bb%d0%b5%d0%bd%d0%b8%d1%86%d0%b0-%d0%bd%d0%b0%d1%87%d0%b0%d0%bb%d0%b0%d1%81%d1%8c-and-so-is-spam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Maslenitsa (Маслница) is a religious holiday celebrated in Russia and Ukraine during the last week before Lent, i.e. the seventh week before Pascha (Easter). This festival is also known as Pancake week or Butter week. During this week people enjoy the social activities that are forbidden during the prayerful Lenten season, such as partying, dancing etc. This year the Maslenitsa will be celebrated from February 20 to February 26.\n","tags":["alert","spam","Security"],"title":"Масленица Началась, And So Is Spam!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-21T16:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/21/ex-girlfriend-sex-videos-browser-plugins-and-facebook-survey-scams/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Scammers are up to their old tricks on Facebook, tricking users into visiting revenue-generating survey scam websites by appearing to offer sex videos.\nUsing a thumbnail which suggests a link to a sex video, messages posted on compromised Facebook users’ walls attempt to lure their unsuspecting Facebook friends into clicking to see more.\nAnd if the use of a saucy snapshot of a naked man and woman in an intimate pose wasn’t enough, the messages also include a variety of names (obscured in the images below) – presumably these are the names of the afflicted users’ Facebook friends.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Ex-girlfriend sex videos, browser plugins and Facebook survey scams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-21T15:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/21/chrome-may-get-a-password-generator/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google’s solution for the problem of getting better passwords on the net – a combination of browser sign-in andOpenID – will take some time to implement as it involves persuading sites to switch to using OpenID. The developers on the Chrome project think that they can at least improve the security of passwords on sites, by generating passwords for the user. A new Password Generation proposal for the Chromium and Chrome browsers attempts to address that by assuming that once the user is signed into the browser, it can take over the handling of password creation.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Password","rumor","Security"],"title":"Chrome may get a password generator"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-21T15:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/21/google-also-bypassed-cookie-settings-in-internet-explorer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online.com: Following the revelation that Google and other online marketing companies have been bypassing the mechanism for blocking third-party cookies in Safari, the Internet Explorer development team asked themselves whether Google might be doing the same thing in IE. As they detail on IEBlog, they discovered that this was the case – Google circumvents Internet Explorer’s cookie policy by subverting the browser’s P3P-based privacy protection mechanism.\nP3P stands for Platform for Privacy Preferences Project and is an open W3C standard. It is intended to help both users and programs determine what sites do with personal data. The cookie management system in Internet Explorer blocks third party cookies from sites that do not supply a P3P policy statement telling it how cookies are used.\n","tags":["Google","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","privacy"],"title":"Google also bypassed cookie settings in Internet Explorer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-19T13:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/19/libreoffice-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"from Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more\nI’m not going to apologize for complaining about the terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad experience I had when I decided to give LibreOffice a try. It was abysmal and improving that experience should be a top priority for that team if they care about expanding LibreOffice beyond the few Linux users who get it pre-installed. But, I do think I could have done more to propose fixes rather than just rant about the brokenness of the experience so I’ve done just that.\n","tags":["follow up","OpenOffice","review"],"title":"LibreOffice Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-19T12:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/19/vlc-2-0-0-twoflower-final-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" WebTrickz: VideoLAN has finally released the much awaited 2.0 version of “VLC Media Player”, the best and most popular media player for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files including DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols. VLC 2.0.0 “Twoflower” is a major release, presented after 485 million downloads of VLC 1.1.x versions. It efficiently plays most codecs (MPEG-2, H.264, DivX, MPEG-4, WebM, WMV player) without requiring any codec packs.\n","tags":["software","Updates","VLC"],"title":"VLC 2.0.0 “Twoflower” Final Released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-17T19:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/17/firefox-and-thunderbird-updates-to-10-0-2-vulnerability-in-libpng/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The Mozilla Project has released updates to Firefox and Thunderbird. According to the release notes, the version 10.0.2 updates to the open source web browser and the news and email client address a security vulnerability; however, at the time of writing, the project’s security pages provide no details of what has been fixed; these releases came soon after a Chrome update which closed 13 security holes and took the version number to 17.0.963.56.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla","software","Thunderbird","Updates","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Firefox and Thunderbird updates to 10.0.2, Vulnerability in libpng"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-17T17:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/17/google-found-evading-safaris-privacy-controls/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google and other advertising companies have been found to be deliberately evading the privacy controls of Apple’s Safari browser. The evasion was revealed in a report in the Wall Street Journal and was based on work by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer. He found that the “+1” button code added to DoubleClick advertisements also allowed a Google DoubleClick tracking code to be installed on desktop Safari on 22 of the top 100 web sites. The same happened with 23 of those 100 sites when using Safari on the iPhone.\n","tags":["Apple","Google","privacy","Safari"],"title":"Google found evading Safari's privacy controls"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-17T15:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/17/nessus-5-0-accelerates-vulnerability-scanning/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Tenable has released version 5.0 of Nessus, its popular vulnerability scanner. The new version of the tool includes an updated installation wizard that is said to make installing and configuring the server and client easier and quicker than before. Scan policies can now be created substantially faster than with previous versions, and the developers have also improved the way users navigate through the results of a vulnerability audit.\n","tags":["News","review","Updates","Security"],"title":"Nessus 5.0 accelerates vulnerability scanning"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-17T14:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/17/malware-to-mourn-whitney-houston/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec: The world is mourning the loss of another legendary pop singer also known as the queen of pop – Whitney Houston. Spammers are paying homage to the icon with a wicked malware. The malicious email shows a video of the last appearance of the star in a Los Angeles night club and also downloads an executable binary. This file is detected by Symantec Antivirus as WS.Reputation.1.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Malware to Mourn Whitney Houston"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-17T14:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/17/second-passport-for-south-africans-its-spam-of-the-day/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Here’s a spam message I received today:\nHi GCLULEY,\nHi. Why the caps? And just “Graham” would be fine.\nDo you find ONLY having a South African passport limiting?\nI don’t have a South African passport, but I haven’t found its absence very limiting.\nDo you find your travel choices abroad restricting and visa applications frustrating?\nNot particularly.\nDo you have an exit strategy if South Africa becomes the next Zimbabwe?\n","tags":["alert","spam","Security"],"title":"Second passport for South Africans? It's spam of the day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-17T14:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/17/apple-previews-os-x-10-8-with-gatekeeper/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: A developer preview of Mac OS X 10.8 is now available to registered Mac developers after Apple announced the new version, named Mountain Lion, and previewed a number of its features. Among those features is Gatekeeper which Apple says “helps prevent you from unknowingly downloading and installing malicious software”.\nThe Gatekeeper feature has three levels of security for running applications downloaded from the Internet; “Mac App Store”, “Mac App Store and identified developers” and “Anywhere”. The first setting only runs applications downloaded from the Mac App Store, in a style similar to the iPhone only running apps from the App Store. Unlike the iPhone though, Gatekeeper lets users allow applications from other sources. The “Mac App Store and Identified Developers” option only allows applications from the store and from developers who have signed their program with an Apple-issued Developer ID, while “Anywhere” allows any program to be downloaded and run. It is unclear how Gatekeeper interacts with software loaded from other media, such as a USB memory stick or CD/DVD.\n","tags":["Announcement","Apple","Mac OS X","Updates"],"title":"Apple previews OS X 10.8 with Gatekeeper"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-16T23:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/16/over-90-of-facebook-users-hate-having-photos-of-them-posted-without-approval/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Facebook users overwhelmingly agree that it’s rude to post photos or videos of them without asking permission first. Some even think it should be illegal.\nSophos has polled over 800 Facebook users, asking whether people should seek permission before posting photographs or videos online of others.\nAlthough a large majority – 83% – of polled Facebook users think it’s just common courtesy to ask permission before posting a photo or video of someone else (and a further 8% felt it should be illegal not to have received approval), some respondents believed that Facebook’s existing tagging controls allowed you to remove a picture that you didn’t want published online.\n","tags":["Facebook","Privacy","Social Media"],"title":"Over 90% of Facebook users hate having photos of them posted without approval"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-16T23:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/16/flash-player-update-plugs-exploited-hole/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Adobe has released updates for Flash Player closing seven holes in the application. Six of the holes can be exploited to allow an attacker to infect a PC using crafted web pages. The seventh is a cross site scripting hole that Adobe says is already being exploited in “active targeted attacks”. The attacks, which are only aimed at Internet Explorer on Windows, try to trick the user into clicking on a malicious link. Adobe say the hole “could be used to take actions on a user’s behalf on any website or webmail provider, if the user visits a malicious website”.\n","tags":["Adobe","Flash","flash player","Security"],"title":"Flash Player update plugs exploited hole"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T19:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/libreoffice-really-really/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I’ve been reading from Mozilla Blog and I liked it and agree with that, so I share it with you:\nI read an article on the Web somewhere that there was a new LibreOffice version. It’s been several years since I gave OpenOffice a try and I’ve been interested to see what OpenOffice had evolved into, so I thought, “Hey, maybe they’ve improved some. I’ll install it and see.” Here is what happened.\n","tags":["link","Mozilla","OpenOffice"],"title":"LibreOffice, Really?! Really?!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T18:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/java-se-updates-fix-critical-security-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Oracle has fixed 14 security holes in the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) with a critical patch update. The vulnerabilities allow attackers to use specially crafted Java WebStart applications or web services in order to install malicious code on computers that run flawed versions of Java. Oracle says that such flawed versions are particularly likely to exist on Windows computers because Windows users tend to have admin privileges. The risk is smaller under operating systems such as Linux and Solaris, the company added.\n","tags":["Java","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Java SE updates fix critical security holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T18:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/warning-whitney-houston-autopsy-video-links-on-facebook-arent-what-they-seem/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: The death of pop superstar Whitney Houston made headlines around the world this weekend, and it didn’t take long for fraudsters and cybercriminals to cash in on the singer’s death.\nFor instance, messages have been seen shared on Facebook claiming to link to a video of Whitney Houston’s autopsy.\nAccording to the messages, the video of Whitney Houston’s autopsy “reveals a shocking secret that explains her death”.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","spam","warning","Security"],"title":"Warning: Whitney Houston autopsy video links on Facebook aren't what they seem"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T18:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/chinese-hackers-had-free-rein-at-nortel/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: According to a report, hackers, allegedly from China, had access to telecoms equipment manufacturer Nortel‘s IT systems over a period of several years – access that they took full advantage of. Citing an internal investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that, using seven passwords stolen from senior managers, intruders had access to almost all confidential information within Nortel from 2000 onwards.\nBrian Shields, the manager who led the Nortel investigation, is quoted as saying that the hackers “had access to everything”. Huge volumes of technical documents, research and development (R\u0026D) reports, business plans and emails were downloaded over the course of several years. “They had plenty of time,” said Shields, “All they had to do was figure out what they wanted.” The seven stolen passwords included the password belonging to the company’s then CEO. The attackers have not been identified, but the WSJ notes that they appear to have been working from China.\n","tags":["hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Chinese hackers had free rein at Nortel"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T18:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/twitter-enables-https-for-all-signed-in-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Twitter has announced that it has now enabled HTTPS by default for all users signed into the micro-blogging service. By using HTTPS, all user information including log-in credentials transmitted to the company’s servers are sent using SSL encryption. This means that all data is transmitted in encrypted form and can no longer be read and exploited for fraudulent activities by attackers using tools such as the Firesheep extension for Firefox.\n","tags":["News","Social Media","SSL","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter enables HTTPS for all signed-in users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T17:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/iphone-5-tester-sms-text-scam-hits-cellphone-users/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Scammers don’t just lure you into visiting their websites via email, Facebook and Twitter – you can be targeted on your mobile phone too.\nFor instance, there have been numerous people on the internet who have reported receiving messages like the following:\nApple needs iPhone5 testers! The first 1000 users who visit [LINK] and enter code 4444 will get to test \u0026 keep the new iPhone5.\nOf course, the promotion has nothing to do with Apple (who do not do public tests of their upcoming products), and – as the iPhone 5 hasn’t even been announced yet – you have close to zero chance of receiving a free smartphone.\n","tags":["Apple","Mobile","spam","Security"],"title":"iPhone 5 tester SMS text scam hits cellphone users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T17:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/microsofts-patch-tuesday-fixes-critical-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: As expected, Microsoft has released nine bulletins to close a total of 21 holes in its products. Four of the bulletins close critical vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET and Silverlight, including an issue in the Windows kernel-mode drivers that became publicly known in December of last year.\nThe company advises those responsible for prioritizing update deployment to focus on the critical patches for Internet Explorer and the C Runtime Library in Windows, as these could be exploited by an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system. For an attack to be successful, a user must first visit a malicious web page or open a specially crafted file. The other critical bulletins fix issues in .NET and Silverlight, as well as the Windows kernel. Microsoft notes that it has yet to see any active attacks exploiting these issues in the wild.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Microsoft's Patch Tuesday fixes critical vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-15T17:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/15/shockwave-player-critical-holes-closed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Adobe has updated Shockwave Player on Windows and Mac OS X to version 11.6.4.634 after identifying nine critical vulnerabilities. The problems affect Shockwave Player 11.6.3.633 and all earlier versions on Windows and Mac OS X – Adobe recommend updating to the new release by downloading it from get.adobe.com/shockwave. To identify whether Shockwave Player is installed on a system, users should visit the test page on Adobe’s site.\nThe majority of the problems are in the Shockwave 3D Asset where seven memory corruption vulnerabilities could lead to code execution; these were all reported by Hongnang Ren of FortiGuard Labs. An eighth memory corruption issue and a heap overflow vulnerability, both of which could also lead to code execution, were reported by “instruder” of vulnhunt.com and bring the flaw tally up to nine.\n","tags":["Adobe","Security","software","Updates"],"title":"Shockwave Player critical holes closed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-14T18:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/14/browser-speed-tests-chrome-17-firefox-10-internet-explorer-9-and-opera-11-61/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"LifeHacker:\nChrome 17 is out with a new pre-rendering feature designed to make your pages load faster, and both Firefox and Opera have also released speedy new versions since our last round of speed tests. So, we’ve once again pitted the four most popular web browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab loading times, and more, with more surprising results.\nContinue Reading: http://lifehacker.com/5884941/browser-speed-tests-chrome-17-firefox-10-internet-explorer-9-and-opera-1161\n(Hint: As always Chrome is winner, no doubt!)\n","tags":["Browsers","compare","Firefox","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Mozilla","Opera"],"title":"Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 17, Firefox 10, Internet Explorer 9, and Opera 11.61"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T20:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/350000-users-exposed-by-hacking-porn-mavens-brazzers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: A hacker, identified as a 17-year-old based in Morocco, claims to have stolen the personal information of 350,000 users from hardcore porn mavens Brazzers.\nThe point, claims the hacker, was to highlight a security vulnerability on the adult site.\nAccording to reports, the teen uploaded a small small of the stolen data to the internet, displaying customer emails, usernames and passwords. Presumably to offer up proof that he was behind the breach.\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"350,000 users exposed by hacking porn mavens Brazzers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T17:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/beware-of-spam-this-valentines-day/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and the spammers are out in force to make the most of unwitting shoppers on the international day of love.\nLooking to buy a present for someone this Valentine’s Day? Ooh look what popped into my inbox, an email inviting me to buy my Valentine an *ahem* “romantic” gift.\nValentine's Day, the 14th February, is the day we celebrate our feelings of affection for our boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives. It is traditional to do this with a special romantic gift. Looking for a Valentine's Day Gift for him or the perfect token of love for her? Look no further than here!\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Phishing","report","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Beware of spam this Valentine's Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T17:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/new-captcha-method-or-just-another-likejacking-scam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sorin Mustaca wrote at Avira TechBlog:\nIn case you’ve seen this on Facebook, try to not click on it even if you understand French (it appears to be only in Franch) because it will take you on a road where you don’t want to be.\nBut, we like to live dangerous, so we analyzed this for you.\nContinue Reading at Avira TechBlog: http://techblog.avira.com/2012/02/13/new-captcha-method-or-just-another-likejacking-scam/en/\n","tags":["analyze","Facebook","Malware","review","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"New CAPTCHA method or just another likejacking scam?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T16:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/opera-12-supports-mozillas-do-not-track-header/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Opera has published a development snapshot of version 12 of its web browser that adds support for Mozilla’s “Do Not Track” (DNT) header. Code-named “Wahoo”, the unstable release is the first from Opera to support the DNT header, which signals web sites that the browser user wishes to opt-out of online behavioral tracking; online advertising networks use cookies and other web technologies to recognize internet users and serve them tailored advertising. Support for DNT in Opera 12 is currently disabled by default. Users can enable it in the preferences dialogue by selecting “Preferences \u003e Advanced \u003e Security \u003e Ask websites not to track me”.\n","tags":["Mozilla","Opera","software","Updates"],"title":"Opera 12 supports Mozilla's \"Do Not Track\" header"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T16:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/reddit-bans-sexual-content-relating-to-minors/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Reddit, known for its freewheeling approach to content management, instituted a new rule over the weekend that banned suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.\n“We have very few rules here on Reddit; no spamming, no cheating, no personal info, nothing illegal, and no interfering the site’s functions,” read a post on the site’s blog Sunday. “Today we are adding another rule.”\nThe post noted that Reddit has dealt with content that “might be child pornography” by complying with legal guidelines and reporting procedures outlined by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.\n","tags":["News","Reddit","Sex"],"title":"Reddit Bans Sexual Content Relating to Minors"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T16:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/metropolitan-police-malware-warning-issued-beware-the-ransomware-attack/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: ComputerWorld today reports that the UK’s Metropolitan Police has warned Windows users of a malware attack that poses as a message from the computer crime-fighting cops themselves.\nThe ransomware attack attempts to lock the computer, and posing as an unofficial notice from a law enforcement agency, claims that the victim’s PC has been determined to have visited illegal websites.\nOnly payment for a fine, claims the message, will restore the computer’s functionality.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","UK","Security"],"title":"Metropolitan Police malware warning issued – beware the ransomware attack!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T16:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/facebook-hoax-facebook-will-end-on-march-15th-2012/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Have you seen the news? Maybe your friends have shared it with you.\nApparently, Facebook is going to shut down on March 15th, 2012. Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly found running the site just too stressful.\nHere’s the link that many Facebook users have been sharing with each other.\nSome worried Facebook users have even been sharing this photograph of a news report about the claimed closure of the world’s most popular social network:\n","tags":["advice","Facebook","hoax","review","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook Hoax: Facebook will end on March 15th 2012"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-13T16:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/13/mozilla-closes-critical-security-hole-in-firefox-thunderbird-and-seamonkey/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Mozilla has released Firefox 10.0.1, Firefox ESR 10.0.1, Thunderbird 10.0.1, Thunderbird ESR 10.0.1 and SeaMonkey 2.7.1 to fix a single critical security hole in the browsers and mail clients which appeared in version 10. The security advisory says that versions previous to Firefox 10, Thunderbird 10 and SeaMonkey 2.7 are unaffected by the use after free problem.\nThe problem was discovered by Mozilla developers and causes a “potentially exploitable” crash in nsXBLDocumentInfo::ReadPrototypeBindings. Updates are available through Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey’s automatic update system and can be made to install by bringing up the “About” dialogue for the relevant application and selecting the “Apply Upgrade” button when it appears. Firefox and Thunderbird 10 were released at the end of January.\n","tags":["Browsers","Email","Firefox","Mozilla","SeaMoney","Security","software","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Mozilla closes critical security hole in Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-12T22:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/12/nasa-own3d-again-nasa-database-leaked-by-r00tw0rm/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Hacker News:\nHackers from Team r00tw0rm again hit NASA. According to Latest tweet by Hackers, They claim to hack the one of the Sudomain of Nasa (Link is not exposed by hackers and claimed to be reported for Fix).\nHackers claim to hack GB’s of database and they Leaked sample of database include Users names, emails and Passwords , Contact as shown:\n","tags":["hack","NASA","News","report","Security"],"title":"\"NASA Own3d Again\" – NASA Database Leaked by r00tw0rm"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-12T22:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/12/microsoft-store-india-got-hacked-in-india/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Hacker News:\nToday, Hackers from group EvilShadow successfully hack and deface the website of Microsoft Store India (http://www.microsoftstore.co.in) . But Hacker upload his deface page at location http://www.microsoftstore.co.in/evil.html .\nHacker revealed that user passwords were saved in plain text as shown below:\n","tags":["hack","Microsoft","report","Security"],"title":"Microsoft Store India got hacked in India!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-12T18:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/12/microsoft-to-send-users-4-critical-patches-on-valentines-day/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Register: Microsoft plans to publish nine updates next Tuesday – four of which are critical – as part of a Valentine’s Day edition of its Patch Tuesday update cycle.\nHighlights of the batch, which collectively address 21 vulnerabilities, include a critical update for Internet Explorer.\nThere are also two critical fixes for Windows itself, plus one for Microsoft’s .NET framework. Three the five remaining “important” fixes grapple with remote code execution-type vulnerabilities, one of which involves Office. Flaws of this type are best addressed sooner rather than later because they might easily be exploited by malware slingers.\n","tags":["link","Microsoft","report","Updates","Windows"],"title":"Microsoft to send users 4 critical patches on Valentine's Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-12T18:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/12/hacker-claims-to-have-compromised-intel/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Inquirer: A Hacker using the pseudonyms ‘Weedgrower’ or ‘X-pOSed’ claims that he has compromised Intel and obtained sensitive data.\nThe solo hacker claims to have found a flaw in the subscriber segment of Intel’s web site, according to The Hacker News. He said that he has access to sensitive data that includes credit card numbers, email addresses and passwords.\nWeedgrower said, “I’ve got to give some applause to all these pseudo-security technicians out there. I cut Intel a break, I have access to a database and another vulnerability which enables the right to read user data. I’ll be gracious here and NOT spill the data, but I will provide screenshots to prove that I have access to Credit Card data and such.”\n","tags":["hack","intel","report","rumor","Security"],"title":"Hacker claims to have compromised Intel"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-12T18:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/12/top-10-downloads-that-enhance-windows-built-in-tools/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"LifeHacker:\nWindows has a ton of great utilities, and while we can’t live without some of them, there’s a special place in our heart for programs that merely improve Windows, rather than adding new software. Here are our top 10 apps that take Windows’ built-in tools and make them better.\nContinue reading it here: http://lifehacker.com/5884261/top-10-downloads-that-enhance-windows-built+in-tools\n","tags":["link","suggestion"],"title":"Top 10 Downloads That Enhance Windows’ Built-In Tools"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-11T11:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/11/cia-website-brought-down-were-anonymous-attackers-responsible/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: The CIA’s website was brought down for some hours last night by what appears to have been an internet distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.\nA post made from an Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account announced that the site was doing using the phrase “CIA Tango Down”, although a later tweet left ambiguity as to whether the hacktivists were claiming responsibility for the attack.\nOf course, this is one of the challenges when trying to get a sense of what actions can be attributed to Anonymous or not.\n","tags":["CIA","hack","report","Security"],"title":"CIA website brought down – were Anonymous attackers responsible?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-11T11:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/11/dutch-isp-kpn-hacked-credentials-and-personal-information-leaked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: One of the largest ISPs in The Netherlands has shut down its email services after hackers posted usernames, passwords, phone numbers, addresses and more of more than 500 customers on the internet.\nKPN discovered the attackers on its network January 27th, but decided not to disclose the information immediately after consulting with the Dutch government and law enforcement agencies.\nPresumably this was intended to allow them to monitor the attacker and gather evidence that might be used to apprehend and prosecute them.\n","tags":["hack","ISP","News","report","Security"],"title":"Dutch ISP KPN hacked, credentials and personal information leaked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T14:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/is-waledac-spam-dirtying-the-russian-2012-elections/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Recently there have been several reports about the re-emergence of a botnet variant (Kelihos), which Symantec detects as W32.Waledac.C. The Waledac family is a threat that has been monitored by Symantec for many years and was featured in numerous blogs as well as a white paper. In the past, Waledac gained its infamy as a spamming botnet that utilized compromised systems to send out spam. The purpose of these spamming campaigns had usually been for self-propagation of the threat through spam emails containing a link, often (but not always) pointing to a Waledac binary file hosted on a malicious website. The variant W32.Waledac.C is also sending out spam emails, but with a twist.\n","tags":["alert","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Is Waledac spam dirtying the Russian 2012 elections?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T13:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/mozilla-firefox-10-0-1-update-about-to-be-released/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" gHacks: Mozilla, developers of the popular Firefox web browser, have just released an update for the browser’s stable branch that moves the version to 10.0.1. The release may come as a surprise to users of Firefox 10, who were updated to that version only ten days ago.\nThis is not the first occurrence that a critical update is released shortly after a major version upgrade of the web browser. Similar updates had to be delivered after the release of Firefox 9 and Firefox 8.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla","software","Updates"],"title":"Mozilla Firefox 10.0.1 Update About To Be Released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T12:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/boston-police-hits-back-at-anonymous-with-sarcasm/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Is it possible to fight Anonymous?\nThe movement is proud of saying that an idea can’t be arrested or killed, but it seems like the Boston Police Department has thought of one way of fighting back: sarcasm.\nA week ago, the BPDNews.com website which provides news about the Boston police and crime in the area was hacked by Anonymous. The hackers replaced the home page of the site with a message and a video of American rapper KRS-One performing his song “Sound of Da Police”.\n","tags":["Anonymous","Video"],"title":"Boston Police hits back at Anonymous with sarcasm"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T12:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/no-further-updates-for-debian-5-0-lenny/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The Debian developers have pointed out, in an announcement on the debian-announce mailing list, that – three years after it was released –Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny) has reached its “End of Life”. Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 was originally released in February 2009 and on 6 February 2012, the developers stopped providing security updates for that version of the distribution.\nUsers have now had a year to update their systems to Lenny’s successor, Squeeze, which was released on 6 February 2011. The Debian developers recommend that any installations that are still using Debian 5.0 should be updated to version 6 of the distribution immediately. The Debian community recently released version 6.0.4 of Debian Squeeze which includes all the updates that have been released for Squeeze since its release.\n","tags":["advice","Announcement","Debian","report","Security"],"title":"No further updates for Debian 5.0 Lenny"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T12:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/63-vulnerabilities-on-united-nation-website-exposed-online/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Hacker News: Latest Notification in The Hacker News Vault by a Hacker named “Xenu (Casi)” from r00tw0rm Team that There are 63 Blind SQL injection Vulnerabilities exist on United Nation’s Website (www.un.org). Blind SQL injection is identical to normal SQL Injection except that when an attacker attempts to exploit an application rather then getting a useful error message they get a generic page specified by the developer instead. This makes exploiting a potential SQL Injection attack more difficult but not impossible. An attacker can still steal data by asking a series of True and False questions through sql statements.\n","tags":["News","report","Vulnerability"],"title":"63 Vulnerabilities on United Nation Website Exposed Online"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T11:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/google-no-were-not-launching-retail-stores-yet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Google planned to open its first-ever public store at its European headquarters in Dublin, if you believed a rumor reported by Bloomberg. But according to a company spokesperson, no plans are definite right now.\nA Google planning application for an expansion of its Dublin office indicated plans for an employee swimming pool, a restaurant and a store. But Google says the company doesn’t have plans to get into the retail business right now.\n","tags":["business","Google","News"],"title":"Google: No, We’re Not Launching Retail Stores Yet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T11:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/love-seekers-beware-online-dating-fraud-rose-150-last-year/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Lonely hearts seeking love this Valentine’s Day, be wary. Online dating fraud rose by 150% percent in 2011 as scammers and hucksters turned up the false charm and predatory trolling.\nThat’s according to data shared with Mashable by fraud protection agency Iovation, which works with several major Internet dating services. Iovation reached that number by employing patented technology that analyzes hardware and software, rather than mine for personal information, says Molly O’Hearn, vice president of operations.\n","tags":["advice","alert","fraud","Online Dating","Security"],"title":"Love-Seekers Beware: Online Dating Fraud Rose 150% Last Year"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T10:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/linkedin-hits-150-million-members/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: LinkedIn on Thursday announced it has 150 million members in its network, a 20 million increase over November.\nThe figure was disclosed in a press release the company issued Thursday announcing its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results.\nThe company posted revenues of $167.7 million, beating the analysts’ consensus of $160 million for Q4. Adjusted profit was $0.12 cents per share, which beat analysts’ projections of 7 cents a share. LinkedIn’s stock was up more than 5% in after-hours trading.\n","tags":["LinkedIn","News","report","Social Media"],"title":"LinkedIn Hits 150 Million Members"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-10T10:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/10/is-digital-pearl-harbor-the-most-tasteless-term-in-it-security/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Can hackers really cause as much bloodshed as 353 Imperial Japanese Navy fighters, bombers and torpedo planes launched from six aircraft carriers? Can hackers really kill 2,402 U.S. citizens, leave 1,282 wounded, lose 65 of their own attackers in the process, and plunge the United States into a World War?\nHeaven only knows. Maybe they can. The lack of security around Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems is scary.\n","tags":["report","review","Security"],"title":"Is Digital Pearl Harbor THE most tasteless term in IT security?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-09T22:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/09/iran-increasingly-controls-its-internet-update-6/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Washington Post wrote:\nTEHRAN — Whenever an Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office, they switches on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.\nBut recently the software, which allowed them to go online through portals elsewhere in the world, stopped working. When it sporadically returns, speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook become unusable.\n[SNIP]\n","tags":["Censorship","internet","Iran"],"title":"Iran increasingly controls its Internet [Update 6]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-09T19:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/09/foxconn-hacked-by-swagg-security/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Hackers operating under the name Swagg Security have said they were responsible for breaching the security of Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. In a posting on Pastebin, the group took credit for penetrating the systems, noting that “Foxconn did have an appropriate firewall, but fortunately to our intent, we were able to bypass it almost flawlessly”. The posting pointed to a 6.5 MB torrent on The Pirate Bay which contained what appears to be CSV file dumps of database tables and other text files. The files included lists of what look like customer names, accounts and plain text passwords though many of those passwords are “foxconn” or “foxconn2”.\n","tags":["attack","hack","report","Security"],"title":"Foxconn hacked by Swagg Security"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T22:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/a-valentines-day-sweepstakes-win-a-pink-sony-vaio-y/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows Experience Blog wrote:\nIf you’ve been reading the blog lately, you know that I’m trying to bring back Valentine’s Day as a cool hip holiday. It’s not my fault; really, I’m just a sucker for a love note. The best thing about a Valentine’s Day card, to be honest, isn’t the words (they are always cheesy) – it’s the thought. With that thought in mind, we headed to the wilderness to create this card for you.\n","tags":["Interesting","Microsoft","promo","Windows"],"title":"A Valentine’s Day Sweepstakes: Win a Pink SONY VAIO Y"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T20:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/russian-spammers-eye-world-content-show/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Television channels across the world are set to be at the 14th International Exhibition and Forum, World Content Show, held Feb 7- 9, 2012, in Russia. The exhibition showcases the latest technologies and trends in the TV and telecommunication industry.\nThis techno-fair will be attended in large numbers by leading media businesses, and spammers don’t want to miss the opportunity to circulate spam around the event. In a bid to catch the reader’s attention, one such spam email reveals some appealing facts about the event, such as Interactive Elements, Prize Drawings, Performance of Popular Leader/Star, and Colorful Musical Concerts.\n","tags":["alert","attack","spam","Security"],"title":"Russian Spammers Eye World Content Show"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T20:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/chrome-updates-for-faster-browsing-and-increased-security/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" LifeHacker: Google is releasing a major update to Chrome today that will make browsing the web seem faster and also add security protections.\nChrome 17 (17.0.963.46) pre-renders pages in the background when you type in the URL in the omnibox address bar so the site will appear to come up almost instantaneously. Chrome also now scans download executable-s (e.g., “.exe” and “.msi” files) and warns you if it thinks the file is malicious.\n","tags":["Announcement","Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates"],"title":"Chrome Updates for Faster Browsing and Increased Security"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T18:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/onenote-mobile-for-android-is-now-available-worldwide/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" For all of you who’ve been asking (and patiently waiting) for a version of OneNote for your Android phones, we have great news: OneNote Mobile for Android is now available! Download it from the Android Market app store today!\nMobile versions of OneNote are currently available on Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and now Android. No matter which platform you prefer, OneNote Mobile lets you easily capture and access all of your notes and ideas on the go.\n","tags":["Android","Announcement","Microsoft","News","Microsoft Office"],"title":"OneNote Mobile for Android is now available worldwide"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T18:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/anonymous-hacks-syrian-presidents-email-the-password-12345/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been under fire from world leaders to step down this week. He’s also under fire from hacktivist group Anonymous, who leaked hundreds of his office’s emails on Monday.\nWhile Anonymous is infamous for its hacking know-how, it doesn’t take a genius computer programmer to guess one of the passwords commonly used by Assad’s office accounts: 12345. The string of consecutive numbers is the second-weakest password according to a 2011 study.\n","tags":["Anonymous","hack","News","Password","report","worlds news","Security"],"title":"Anonymous Hacks Syrian President’s Email. The Password: 12345"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T16:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/yahoo-chairman-steps-down/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Yahoo‘s chairman of the board, Roy Bostock, is leaving the company. Bostock has been chairman since 2008.\nBostock revealed the news to shareholders in a long letter describing the company’s recent re-strategizing. A far cry from a resignation letter, Bostock is upbeat about Yahoo’s future and its recent moves, saying that, since the company is in a position to “drive innovation and growth going forward,” he will not seek re-election at the next shareholders’ meeting.\n","tags":["business","News","Yahoo"],"title":"Yahoo Chairman Steps Down"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T16:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/hackers-fail-to-extort-50000-from-symantec-as-pcanywhere-source-code-is-published/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Symantec has confirmed that a file made available on the internet for anyone to download, does contain the source code for an old version of its pcAnywhere product.\nFor a short while last month, before releasing a patch, Symantec advised customers to disable their pcAnywhere installations because of concern that hackers could exploit vulnerabilities.\nIn addition, the firm says that in January someone claiming to be the hacker responsible for the data theft tried to extort $50,000 from the firm in exchange for not releasing Symantec’s stolen source code.\n","tags":["News","Security","symantec"],"title":"Hackers fail to extort $50,000 from Symantec, as pcAnywhere source code is published"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T16:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/phishers-bank-on-tax-season/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Sunbelt: With the U.S. currently in tax season, online criminals have, once again, sought to take advantage of this. Robert Stetson, one of Sunbelt’s malware researchers, spotted a phishing email posing as Intuit Inc., a company that “develops financial and tax preparation software”. They developed Quicken and TurboTax. Below is a screenshot of the said email:\nEmail details are as follows:\nSubject: Please verify your tax information ASAP.\nMessage body:\nGood afternoon,\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","Security","spam"],"title":"Phishers Bank on Tax Season"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-08T16:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/08/satellite-phone-encryption-cracked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"H-Online: Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany have announced that they have cracked the A5-GMR-1 and A5-GMR-2 encryption algorithms used in satellite phones. Satellite phones are mainly used in areas with insufficient mobile network coverage and in the maritime sector.\nThe researchers obtained the proprietary, and previously undocumented, algorithms by reverse engineering phone firmware updates. Ideally this, in itself, should not compromise the security of the transmitted data. Data security should not depend on the secrecy of the encryption methods, it should only depend on the non-disclosure of the secret key that is being used.\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"Satellite phone encryption cracked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-07T20:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/07/attackers-taking-aim-at-retail-and-food-chains/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"v3.co.uk: The uniform infrastructure and predictable behaviors are making corporate retail and restaurant chains the choice targets for cybercriminals.\nA report from security firm Trustwave found that attackers favor companies with chains of outlets, such as those commonly found in the food and retail industries, when launching targeted attacks.\nThe attackers like the uniform IT infrastructure that large chains deploy at individual sites, Nicholas Percoco, head of the Trustwave’s SpiderLabs team, told V3.\n","tags":["attack","hack","Password","Security"],"title":"Attackers taking aim at retail and food chains"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-07T19:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/07/introducing-chrome-for-android/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Chrome Wrote:\nIn 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we’re introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.\n","tags":["Android","Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","News"],"title":"Introducing Chrome for Android"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-07T14:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/07/adobe-releases-beta-version-of-sandboxed-flash-for-firefox/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Adobe has released a public beta of a sandboxed version of its Flash plugin for Firefox in an effort to improve its security. The new “Protected Mode” for Flash, which has been in development for at least a year according to Adobe engineer Peleus Uhley, runs with restricted privileges and, to further limit its access to the system, can only access system resources through a broker. This should help intercept attackers trying to gain access to a system through malicious Flash files.\n","tags":["Adobe","Browsers","Firefox","flash player","plugins","Security"],"title":"Adobe releases beta version of sandboxed Flash for Firefox"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-07T14:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/07/realplayer-update-closes-critical-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: RealNetworks has released an update to RealPlayer to close a number of holes in its media player application. Version 15.02.71 of RealPlayer addresses a total of seven remote code execution vulnerabilities, rated as highly critical by Secunia, which could be exploited by an attacker to compromise a victim’s system.\nThese include errors when processing RMFF Flags, VIDOBJ_START_CODE and RealAudio coded_frame_size, as well as RV10 Encoded Height/Width, RV20 Frame Size Array and RV40 content. A remote code execution problem in Atrac Sample Decoding has also been fixed but is not found in the 15.x.x branch of the media player; this issue affects Mac RealPlayer 12.0.0.1701 but is reportedly not found in version 12.0.0.1703.\n","tags":["RealPlayer","Security","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"RealPlayer update closes critical holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-07T14:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/07/google-plans-to-turn-off-online-checks-for-ssl-certificate-validity/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Google plans to turn off online checks for SSL certificate validity in its Chrome browser soon, according to a blog post by Adam Langley, the developer in charge of that element of the browser. Instead, the browser will use the update mechanism to receive lists of revoked certificates.\nWhen browsers make a connection, they check whether the certificate presented by the server has already been blocked by the certificate authority, using either the certificate authority’s certificate revocation lists (CRLs) or, directly and interactively, the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). But that whole process has never been completely reliable, since, if the browser isn’t certain of the validity – if, say, an OCSP request doesn’t work – it simply “looks the other way”. Otherwise, there would be too many false alarms.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","News","SSL"],"title":"Google plans to turn off online checks for SSL certificate validity"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-02-06T21:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/a-response-to-all-of-the-your-complains/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey People!\nMany of you complain (or only think) that I don’t care about you, because I don’t get in touch with you often. Well, you are thinking wrong!\nThe fact that I don’t call you often is true (Either via phone, messenger, email or social networks), But I’ve a reason for that and its that I never want to be a person that you think why you allowed to become a friend of you, I would rather to be “nothing” rather than “bother”, I will explain it more:\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"A response to all of the your complains"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-06T20:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/malware-automatically-uploading-stolen-data-to-the-file-sharing-sites/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Hacker News: Roland Dela Paz, a threat response engineer with Trend Micro have discovered a piece of malicious software that automatically uploads its stolen data cache to the SendSpace file-sharing service for retrieval. File-storage services offer several advantages for cybercriminals.\nSendSpace accepts files and then generates a link that can be shared with other people to download the content in the files. The malware has been configured to send files, copy the download link and send it to a command-and-control server along with the password needed to access the archive, Dela Paz wrote.\n","tags":["Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Malware automatically uploading stolen data to the File sharing sites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-06T19:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/joomla-updates-close-information-disclosure-holes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: Versions 1.7.5 and 2.5.1 of the open source Joomla! content management system (CMS) have been released to address two information disclosure vulnerabilities. These include one medium severity problem in Joomla! 1.7.x that could allow an unauthorized user to gain access to the error log stored on a victim’s server, and, in both versions, an inadequate validation problem that could be exploited to gain access to private data. The update to Joomla! 2.5, which arrived last month, also fixes 30 bugs, including one that caused batch processing to break.\n","tags":["Joomla","report","Security","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Joomla! updates close information disclosure holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-06T17:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/usa-to-equip-military-government-officials-with-androids/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: The United States, which currently forbids government workers or soldiers to use smartphones to send classified messages, is preparing a modified version of Google’s Android operating system that will meet its security certifications.\nAccording to CNN, the army has been testing touchscreen devices at U.S. bases for almost two years. Forty phones were sent to soldiers overseas last year, and another 50 phones and 75 tablets are scheduled to ship to soldiers in March.\n","tags":["Android","Google","government","Military","News","Smartphone"],"title":"USA to equip military, government officials with Androids"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-06T17:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/google-launches-solve-for-x-think-tank-for-fixing-global-problems/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Google just debuted a project dedicated to attacking some of the biggest problems facing civilization, such as global warming, and proposing “radical” ideas for solving them.\nSolve for X\nCalled “Solve for X,” the idea resembles TED (Technology Entertainment and Design), the series of conferences that feature industry leaders exploring big-picture ideas and how they can improve society. Solve for X, however, appears to be more focused on global problems, using them as opportunities to encourage “moonshot” thinking.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","News","report","TED","Video"],"title":"Google Launches ‘Solve for X,’ Think Tank for Fixing Global Problems"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-06T16:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/german-government-makes-recommendations-for-secure-windows-pcs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The German Federal Office of Information Security (BSI (German), BSI English) has compiled security recommendations for Windows PCs that will probably sound familiar to regular readers of The H: Anti-virus software – including free solutions –, backups, security updates, an alternative browser such as Google Chrome and “a healthy level of mistrust” are the main components of its proposal for a secure Windows PC. As the UK lacks a governmental organization that makes such recommendations, as usually such organizations recommend policy for public projects, it is worth seeing what Germany’s BSI suggests.\n","tags":["advice","antivirus","Browsers","Germany","Google Chrome","recommended","report","Security","Windows"],"title":"German government makes recommendations for secure Windows PCs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-06T16:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/goodbye-btjunkie/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"gHacks: Users of the popular Bittorrent indexing website BTJunkie who try to access the site’s content in a web browser are not seeing the usual site layout, but a goodbye message instead. The message states that the site operators have decided to close down the service voluntarily after more than seven years of operation.\nNo reason other than that is provided, but it is likely that the decision is linked to recent events, in particular the Pirate Bay case in Sweden where founders of the site recently lost the final appeal and are looking at prison time, and the Megaupload takedown and the fallout that followed.\n","tags":["News","Torrent"],"title":"Goodbye BTJunkie"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-02-06T15:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/06/us-vs-rest-of-the-world/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Really why?\nClick on image to see full size\n","tags":["interesting"],"title":"US vs Rest of the World"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-03T15:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/03/us-attacks-iran-and-saudi-arabia-malware-spreads-via-facebook-status-updates/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Beware of malware lurking on news websites claiming to containing breaking news stories.\nI’ve seen a worrying number of Facebook users posting the same status messages today, claiming that the United States has attacked Iran and Saudi Arabia in a move heralding the beginning of World War 3.\nWell, that would certainly get your attention, wouldn’t it?\nA typical status message looks like the following:\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","hoax","Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"US attacks Iran and Saudi Arabia? Malware spreads via Facebook status updates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-03T14:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/03/skype-5-8-for-windows-brings-full-hd-video-calls-facebook-integration/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Skype for Windows version 5.8 is out, bringing several interesting features, including full HD video-calling, group screen sharing and Facebook integration.\nFull HD video calls will be most useful to those who own a HD webcam, for example Logitech C920 which does the video encoding itself thus improving HD video quality on older computers.\nVideo calling for Facebook works even with users who don’t use Skype. To start a video call with a Facebook buddy, select the person in your list and click “video call.”\n","tags":["Facebook","Microsoft","Skype","software","Updates"],"title":"Skype 5.8 For Windows Brings Full HD Video Calls, Facebook Integration"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-03T14:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/03/msupdate-trojan-attacked-companies-in-the-defense-sector/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Unknown attackers have tried to use an invitation to a prestigious conference to inject a Trojan into companies in the defense sector. The security firms Seculert and Zscaler report that opening an attached PDF flyer caused recipients’ computers to be infected with spyware via a previously undisclosed hole in Acrobat Reader.\nAccording to the report, the attack mainly targeted government-related organizations, including military and aerospace contractors, in Europe and in the US. The security firms said that the attacks started back in 2009 and peaked in autumn 2010. Talking to The H’s associates at heise Security, Seculert CTO Aviv Raff added that compromised computers, some of which had been infected for two years, were only discovered a few weeks ago.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Microsoft","spam","trojan","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"MSUpdate Trojan attacked companies in the defense sector"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-02T18:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/02/critical-php-vulnerability-being-fixed/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: The PHP developers are working to fix a critical security vulnerability in PHP that they introduced with a recent security patch. The current stable release is affected; however, it is not yet clear whether the questionable patch was also applied to older versions.\nThe cause of the problem is the security update to PHP 5.3.9, which was written to prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks using hash collisions. To do so, the developers limited the maximum possible number of input parameters to 1,000 in php_variables.c using max_input_vars. Because of mistakes in the implementation, hackers can intentionally exceed this limit and inject and execute code. The bug is considered to be critical as code can be remotely injected over the web.\n","tags":["PHP","report","Security","Updates"],"title":"Critical PHP vulnerability being fixed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-02T13:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/02/yet-another-facebook-hoax-new-way-gangs-steal-rape-and-kidnap-girls/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Facebook users are innocently sharing advice with their online friends about how women can avoid being kidnapped and raped, not realizing that they are perpetuating a hoax.\nHere’s a typical message that is being shared, which comes attached to an image of a young woman gagged and tied up in the trunk of a car.\nPLEASE READ CAREFULLY\nThis message is for every Girl Who Goes to college or office alone.If u find any child carrying on road showing his/her address n asking u to take him/her to that address,take that child to police station n plz don't take it to that address . IT IS A NEW WAY GANGS TO STEAL,RAPE and KIDNAP GIRLS .plz circulate to all .don't feel shy to copy This as ur status .\nOUR ONE MESSAGE MAY SAVE A GIRL\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","hoax","spam","Security"],"title":"Yet another Facebook Hoax: ‘New Way Gangs Steal, Rape and Kidnap Girls'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-02T12:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/02/mozilla-closes-critical-holes-in-firefox-thunderbird-and-seamonkey/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Following the release of new versions of its open source Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client and SeaMonkey suite, Mozilla has detailed the security fixes included in each of the updates. According to the project’s Security Center page for Firefox, version 10.0 closes a total of 8 security holes in the browser, 5 of which are rated as “Critical” by Mozilla.\nThe critical issues include an exploitable crash when processing a malformed embedded XSLT stylesheet, potential memory corruption when decoding Ogg Vorbis files, XPConnect security checks being bypassed by frame scripts, a use after free error in child nodes from nsDOMAttribute and various memory safety hazards. These vulnerabilities could be exploited remotely by an attacker to, for example, execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","SeaMoney","software","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Mozilla closes critical holes in Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-02T12:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/02/facebook-ipo-comes-with-a-health-warning/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Facebook’s IPO is the most hyped initial public offering in years, with much speculation about just how many billions of dollars the social networking phenomenon will be valued at.\nThere’s no doubt that 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is going to become a very rich man – and will be able to buy an even larger wardrobe of hoodies.\nSo, congratulations to Zuck and his management team. Although we have often had our concerns about Facebook when it comes to their stand on privacy and security, there’s no doubt that they’ve done something extraordinary in commercial terms.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","Mark Zuckerberg","review","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Facebook IPO comes with a health warning"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-02T12:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/02/apple-releases-mac-os-x-10-7-3/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Apple has released Mac OS X 10.7.3 and, for Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard users who have yet to upgrade to Lion, Security Update 2012-001; these maintenance and security updates addresses a number of vulnerabilities in the company’s desktop and server operating systems. According to Apple, the updates close more than 50 holes, many of which could be exploited by an attacker to, for example, remotely execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system, gain access to private information or cause a denial-of-service (DoS).\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Updates"],"title":"Apple releases Mac OS X 10.7.3"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-02-01T22:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/02/01/facebook-spam-police-officer-does-good-deed-before-he-dies-moments-later/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Have you seen this in your or your friends wall? or maybe in a page you “Like”?\nThat’s another spam link spreading over Facebook, as I already showed you many more in older posts. Usually these links end up either in a phishing attack that theft your private information or infecting your computer.\nIf your friend or even a stranger is posting these, don’t click on that and also report the post, here is how to do:\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Spam: Police officer does good deed before he dies moments later"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-24T13:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/24/megaupload-up-again-no/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"GFI: You’re probably aware that Megaupload has wandered into what can only be described as a bit of a pickle, assuming said pickle is roughly the size of a Vogon Constructor Fleet.\nGiven that lots of people probably want to take a peek at the FBI Anti-Warning currently pasted across the front of Megaupload.com (or maybe even just see if the site is back online), it’s a fair bet that Ye Olde Typo Fairy will be called into action and some of them will end up going to Megaupload(dot)cm.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Megaupload, up again? no"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-24T12:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/24/facebook-scam-free-amazon-com-gift-card-promotion/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Gift card scams are a common sight on Facebook, and this weekend it has been the turn of Amazon.com to be the brand used by cybercriminals as a way of making them cash.\nOne Free Amazon.com Gift Card (limited time only)\n[LINK]\nAmazon is currently giving away gift cards to all facebook users. Click here to get one!\nWhen you see one of your friends share a link like this with you, the truth is that they have been duped into a scam. Be careful not to make the same mistake as them, or you’ll just be helping put cash into the pockets of the bad guys.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Scam: Free Amazon.com gift card promotion"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-24T11:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/24/more-facebook-scam-linksvideos-you-want-to-avoid/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Recently I’m seeing more facebook scams which claim to be very hot videos, but they are nothing but scam, here is 2 samples:\nWhen you see any of them, hover your mouse over the post, and click on the x button in top right which says “Report/Mark Spam”.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"More Facebook scam links/videos you want to avoid"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-24T11:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/24/facebook-scam-see-who-views-your-profile/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Earlier today we have seen a new Facebook clickjacking scam which spreads quite fast.\nI KNOW WHEN YOU LOOK AT MY PROFILE USING THIS: http://bit.ly/\nNEW! See who views your profile!\nwww..com\nDo you want to know who is looking at your photos right now? Find out who looks at your profile the most and what they look at!\nor other variant even more provocative:\nCLICK HERE TO SEE WHO IS STALKING YOU: http://bit.ly\nNEW! See who views your profile!\nwww..com\nDo you want to know who is looking at your photos right now? Find out who looks at your profile the most and what they look at!\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Malware","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Scam: See who views your profile!"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-01-18T17:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/18/you-dislike-it-too-sore-throat-part-2/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"As I told you in my other post, I’m dealing with a Sore Throat which is very annoying, I tried some simple stuff like gargle warm water and salt, drinking warm drinks, honey and lemon, lots of Vitamin C, Zinc and and and…. they did not work, my Sore Throat went one step ahead and reached a major infection level.\nI went to meet my doctor, after a check-up he wrote a long prescription for me:\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"You dislike it too: Sore Throat [Part 2]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-17T10:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/17/la-time-dropbox-inventor-determined-to-build-the-next-apple-or-google/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Drew Houston’s wildly popular service allows people to access the latest version of all their digital stuff on any device no matter where they are. Every day 325 million files are saved on Dropbox.\nDrew Houston, 28, chief executive and co-founder of Dropbox, last fall pocketed $250 million from seven of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms. That eye-popping sum pegged the value of his company at $4 billion and his own net worth — at least on paper — at an estimated $600 million. (Matt Staver, Bloomberg / July 6, 2011)\n","tags":["Dropbox","link","report"],"title":"LA Time: Dropbox inventor determined to build the next Apple or Google"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-14T10:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/14/hotmail-phishing-dont-send-us-the-wrong-password-or-well-suspend-your-account/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Have you been told to verify your Hotmail account? Did you receive a message saying that Hotmail’s email servers were congested, and so they were removing all unused accounts?\nIf so, I hope you responded to the email with a roll of the eyes and a quick stab of the delete button. Because if you didn’t, you might have been at risk of having your login credentials stolen.\n","tags":["alert","Hotmail","Phishing","scam","Windows Live","Security"],"title":"Hotmail phishing: Don't send us the wrong password or we'll suspend your account!"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-01-12T17:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/12/you-dislike-it-too-sore-throat/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I bet you dislike it when your throat hurts, when you have that damned feeling in your skin, when your nose become a useless meat on your face, when you become slightly weak and when your eyes get tired soon, after-all when you realize you have got cold or flu…\nYeah, above text is all about me and how I am now, finally those little virus(es) could welcome themselves to my body and have a party, those little unwanted guests!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"You dislike it too: Sore Throat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-11T19:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/11/pink-facebook-red-or-black-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Pink Facebook? Red or black Facebook?\nNo, it’s a scam you want to avoid. Share the knowledge with your friends!\nCredit to Norman Security for sharing 🙂\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Pink Facebook? Red or black Facebook?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2012-01-08T19:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/08/chrome-17-enters-beta-improves-speed-and-security/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Security: Version 17 of Chrome has been released into the WebKit-based browser’s Beta channel. Its developers say that the new Chrome beta, version 17.0.963.26, is focused on improving two of the browser’s core principles: speed and security.\nTo make Chrome “go even faster”, some web pages will start loading in the background before a user has even finished typing a URL into the Omnibox address and search bar. To reduce the time between a user pressing enter and the page being fully loaded, Chrome will pre-render some pages if the URL auto-completes to a site a user is likely to visit. According to Google Software Engineer Dominic Hamon, this will, in some cases, cause pages to appear “instantly”.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 17 enters beta, improves speed and security"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-01-05T20:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/05/the-fundamental-cause-of-trouble-in-the-world/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.\n— Bertrand Russell\n","tags":["quote"],"title":"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2012-01-02T20:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2012/01/02/feeling-good-abnormally/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Is not it great when you feel happy without any reason? When nothing happened and you smile…Yeah, I don’t know why but I’m feeling that way, My life is not ideal and majority of stuff around me is negative but still I’ve this strange happiness inside! No matter it came from but that’s very welcome and I like that.\nA few days ago I’ve been sitting in the bus coming back home and listening to beautiful voice of Kirsty Hawkshaw singing “A Million Star” and feeling warmth of sunshine on my face after a very cold snowy day and also having less stress in mind since some of the problems is unlocked (not solved yet, but in progress in a good way…), In that moment I really felt its time to smile and enjoy the life, life can be beautiful from time to time.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Feeling good, abnormally"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-12-17T19:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/12/17/internet-explorer-to-upgrade-automatically-unless-you-say-no/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin announced a new strategy to keep the web safe… Keep your Internet Explorer up to date.\nIt is great news for Windows users who don’t appreciate the importance of staying up to date.\nMicrosoft has been struggling with browser stragglers for years. They even ran their own campaign comparing IE 6 to spoiled milk including shameful infopr0n.\nOld versions of IE leave a considerable number of users vulnerable to old exploits, or in their parlance easy targets.\n","tags":["Browsers","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","News","Updates"],"title":"Internet Explorer to upgrade automatically, unless you say no"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-12-17T19:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/12/17/adobe-closes-acrobat-and-reader-security-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online: The first patches for the zero-day flaw in Adobe’s Acrobat and Reader applications, which the company confirmed was being exploited in the wild, have been released. The initial problem was caused by a memory corruption when processing Universal 3D (U3D) files, which could allow attackers to potentially take control of an affected system. The patches released also address a newly revealed critical flaw (CVE-2011-4369) which can cause memory corruption when processing Product Representation Compact (PRC) 3D files.\n","tags":["Adobe","report","review","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe closes Acrobat and Reader security holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-12-17T18:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/12/17/visa-looks-into-eastern-european-security-breach/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Visa is investigating a potential security breach that may have compromised payment cards of Eastern Europeans.\nAlthough Visa hasn’t disclosed which countries were hit, the Romanian state-owned CEC Bank has blocked and reissued 17,000 cards on suspicion that they had been compromised.\nCEC Bank said in a statement that “a number” of cards issued by banks both in Romania and abroad might have been compromised via an international database.\n","tags":["review","Security","visa"],"title":"Visa looks into Eastern European security breach"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-12-10T19:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/12/10/one-is-bad-and-everyone-else-good-or-its-likewise/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There are so many groups of people in world, we all know that, So many different group and kind of people, we can group them with different factors, with their born location, with their skin color, with their hair color, with eyes color, being left hand or right hand, with their political view, with their religious view and believes, with their education levels, with their languages, with their music tastes and…\n","tags":["I think"],"title":"One is bad and everyone else good or its likewise?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-12-09T12:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/12/09/come-join-my-forum/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hi Folks!\nI would like to invite you to join my forum, its a small forum for now but by the time it will get better, feel free to join and express yourself in whatever you like, feel free to post whatever you like except advertisement, Thanks! 🙂\nforum.omid.dev\nThank you for joining in advance\n-Omid\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"Come join my forum"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-24T12:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/24/damn-the-only-thing-i-did-not-need-happened/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Oh no! the only thing I did not need happened, my laptop passed away, send me your good wishes!\nI need to go look if it worth it to repair or better I look for a new PC with just mercy in my wallet.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Damn, the only thing I did not need happened"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-22T21:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/22/i-can-always-say-its-gonna-be-better-tomorrow/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey, I’m feeling tired.\nMy time, is gone today.\nYou flirt with suicide.\nSometimes, that’s ok.\nDo what others say.\nI’m here, standing hollow.\nFalling away from me.\nFalling away from me.\n_\n_\nDay, is here fading.\nThat’s when, I would say.\nI flirt with suicide.\nSometimes kill the pain.\nI can always say.\n‘It’s gonna be better tomorrow’.\nFalling away from me.\nFalling away from me.\n","tags":["Video"],"title":"I can always say: ‘It's gonna be better tomorrow'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-18T16:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/18/keep-your-facebook-friends-close-and-your-antivirus-closer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft Malware Protection Center: Facebook malware attacks are not new. Scams spreading via status updates have been around for a long time, but in recent weeks one threat has been getting creative in terms of social engineering. Backdoor:Win32/Caphaw.A can intercept URL requests in both Firefox and Internet Explorer and it has been observed to post very personable updates on friends’ walls in Facebook, gaining access if the user is logged in.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","Malware","Security"],"title":"Keep your Facebook friends close and your antivirus closer"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-18T16:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/18/i-realized-some-of-the-my-thoughts-regarding-life/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I’m almost 23 years old and I’m not that old that to say much about life and teach you how to live, and maybe I’m wrong in many stuff, so here I write my thoughts and please correct me if you think I’m wrong, all your opinions, positive or negative is welcome:\nAsking for help is not a good solution: Nobody care about more than yourself, nobody think same way as you, asking for help only will give some info to other people to be able bother you, The reason is that I’ve experienced that situation many many times.\n","tags":["I think"],"title":"I realized: Some of the my thoughts regarding life"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-17T14:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/17/stop-censorship-help-us-stop-the-internet-blacklist-legislation/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Protect the Internet Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation Mozilla: On November 16th, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system. This bill can pass. If it does, the Internet and free speech will never be the same.\nJoin us to stop this bill.\nWhy? A few infringing links are enough to justify censoring an entire site, blocking good content along with the bad.\n","tags":["alert","events","Google","internet","Mozilla","News","sopa","Security"],"title":"Stop Censorship: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-17T11:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/17/no-one-can-see/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" …Und der Haifisch, der hat Tränen\nund die laufen vom Gesicht;\ndoch der Haifisch lebt im Wasser –\nso die Tränen sieht man nicht…_\n…And the shark, that has tears\nAnd they run from the face\nBut the shark lives in water\nSo no one can see the tears…_\n","tags":["interesting","mood","Music"],"title":"No one can see"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-13T12:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/13/finally-goethe/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey Folks!\nFrom tomorrow my classes in Goethe Institute will begin, 3 days a week (Sa, Mo, We), from 2:00PM to 3:30PM, I hope I will be finishing that with no problem, seems each level takes 16 weeks and there are 16 level in total, so its gonna take 5 years? ah, that’s a long time!, I will be 27 years old!.\nHave a good day, folks!\n-Omid\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Finally, Goethe!"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-10T20:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/10/todays-tip-smile-always/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Today’s Tip:\nSmile Always….\n","tags":["interesting"],"title":"Today's Tip: Smile Always"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-11-09T16:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/09/ive-been-bored/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I’ve been bored today and playing random videos and this one made me smile, so I want to share with you 🙂\nHave a good times!\n","tags":["Video"],"title":"I've been bored"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-04T20:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/04/persistent-xss-vulnerability-in-white-house-website/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Hacker News: Alexander Fuchs, A German Security Researcher Discover Persistent XSS Vulnerability in Official website of White House.\n“The petition system is vulnerable. Every Petition i start or join will execute my code. I could join all petitions and my code will be executed on all users who visit the petition system.” He said.\nRead full story in German: http://www.1337core.de/2011/die-whitehouse-gov-lol-petition/\nThe XSS Demo is here: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/security/WxgwM7DS\nAdvisory: http://vulnerability-lab.com/get_content.php?id=308\nWhat is XSS? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting\n","tags":["The White House","Vulnerability","XSS","Security"],"title":"Persistent XSS Vulnerability in White House Website"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-04T11:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/04/forward-button-to-become-optional-in-firefox/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" mozillalinks.org: Do you need the forward button? Most likely yes, but it is rarely used compared to the back button, which is the single most used widget in any browser user interface. So it doesn’t make sense to keep it present at all times, stealing focus from its helpful neighbor.\nTo address this, current Firefox nightlies feature the forward button as optional. If there is nowhere to go further, the button is hidden instead of just disabled as shown in the screenshot below.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla"],"title":"Forward button to become optional in Firefox"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-03T12:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/03/internet-explorers-share-of-web-traffic-drops-below-50/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Internet Explorer can no longer claim more than half of the web’s traffic, as of October, ending more than a decade of the default Microsoft browser’s reign.\nSafari’s hold on 62.17% of mobile traffic has reduced IE’s overall share of web browsing, despite still claiming 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to Netmarketshare.com.\nThe Microsoft browser’s diminishing share (49.6%) reflects its near absence from the realms of mobile and tablet, which now make up 6% of web traffic. However, chances are, you gave up on IE long enough ago that this milestone makes you more curious as to who actually still uses the browser.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Mobile Browsers","Safari"],"title":"Internet Explorer’s Share of Web Traffic Drops Below 50%"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-03T12:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/03/google-releases-official-google-notification-extension-for-chrome/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" gHacks.net: If you are a heavy user of Google’s Google+ social networking product you are probably keeping the site running in a tab all the time to never miss new messages. But even if you do, you need to switch back to the tab regularly to see if there are any new notifications on Google+.\nNotifier extensions make sure that users stay informed even if they close the Google+ browser window. Up until now Chrome users could make use of third party notifiers which, will working perfectly, were not official which may have kept some users from installing and using those extensions.\n","tags":["Extension","Google","Google Chrome","Google Plus"],"title":"Google Releases Official Google+ Notification Extension For Chrome"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-03T12:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/03/duqu-exploits-previously-unknown-vulnerability-in-windows-kernel/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Online Security: Microsoft has confirmed a report from Budapest-based Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS), which claimed that the Duqu bot spreads by exploiting a zero day vulnerability in the Windows kernel. How it spreads had previously been unknown. CrySyS discovered the Windows vulnerability whilst analysing the installer. The bot, which anti-virus software firm Symantec believes is related to Stuxnet, infects target systems using a specially crafted Word file which injects the malware into the system using a kernel exploit. Microsoft is already working on a patch.\n","tags":["0-Day","Duqu","Microsoft","report","review","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Duqu exploits previously unknown vulnerability in Windows kernel"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-11-03T12:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/11/03/facebook-scam-girl-killed-herself-on-halloween/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Scammers have put a new spin on an old Facebook scam, claiming that a girl killed herself on Halloween after her father posted a message on her wall.\nFacebook users are sharing messages with their friends, claiming to link to the salacious content.\nGirl-Killed-Herself-on-Halloween-After-Dad-Posted-This-on-Her-Wall\n[LINK]\nThis is unbelievable.. shocking..\nThe messages are currently spreading very quickly on Facebook, as – at the moment at least – Facebook’s built-in security systems are not blocking them.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Scam: Girl killed herself on Halloween"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-10-28T17:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/28/happy-birthday-lady-liberty/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I wish Lady Liberty a Happy 125th Birthday today!\n","tags":["events"],"title":"Happy Birthday Lady Liberty!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-25T17:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/25/mybb-downloads-were-infected/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: In a blog posting, the MyBB development team has confirmed that the download package for version 1.6.4 of MyBB had been modified to include malicious code. Unknown attackers were able to exploit a vulnerability in the MyBB web site’s CMS (content management system) to inject and execute PHP code.\nThe attackers placed a contaminated version of MyBB, containing a backdoor, on the server. It is unclear exactly when the hack took place, meaning that all downloads of 1.6.4 prior to 6 October could be affected. Users with MyBB systems are advised to check their installations and apply a patch. For rapid disinfection, the developers are advising users to replace the /index.php file with a clean version and to delete the /install/ directory.\n","tags":["advice","alert","forum","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"MyBB downloads were infected"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-25T16:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/25/hoax-the-pink-profile-pic-facebook-virus-hoax/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Have you noticed the profile pics of some of your Facebook friends have acquired a pink tinge?\nRumours have hit the social networking site that the Facebook app that turns your profile picture pink carries “keylogger malware” that can spy on your keypresses, and steal your passwords – not just from Facebook, but from online banks you may log into as well.\nOne warning reads as follows:\n","tags":["Facebook","hoax","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Hoax: The Pink Profile Pic Facebook virus hoax"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-23T18:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/23/the-continuation-of-dangerous-rogue-ads-on-bing-and-yahoo/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"GFI Labs Blog: We’ve noted this before, but Microsoft needs to get a handle on ad placements on Bing. Ok, so Bing isn’t the most widely used search engine, but remember that Yahoo plays a part here as well.\nIn this case, we’re talking Sirefef (ZeroAccess aka Max++), probably the nastiest piece of malware circulating on the ‘net right now. Sirefef kills any attempt to remove it, and is nearly impossible to clean (short of booting onto a rescue disk and performing cleanup actions, or reformatting).\n","tags":["advice","alert","Bing","Malware","Search","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"The continuation of dangerous rogue ads on Bing (and Yahoo)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-20T22:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/20/duqu-son-of-stuxnet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Schneier on Security: A newly discovered piece of malware, Duqu, seems to be a precursor to the next Stuxnet-like worm and uses some of the same techniques as the original. Link to Source\nSymantec: W32.Duqu: The Precursor to the Next Stuxnet\nDuqu is essentially the precursor to a future Stuxnet-like attack. The threat was written by the same authors (or those that have access to the Stuxnet source code) and appears to have been created since the last Stuxnet file was recovered. Duqu’s purpose is to gather intelligence data and assets from entities, such as industrial control system manufacturers, in order to more easily conduct a future attack against another third party. The attackers are looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility. Read Full Article\n","tags":["alert","Duqu","Malware","review","Security","Stuxnet"],"title":"Duqu, Son of Stuxnet?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-20T20:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/20/twitter-malware-attack-photos-of-dead-gaddafi/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: As reports of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s death circulate on the Internet, so is a gruesome cellphone photo of what appears to be his severely wounded body and another that appears to be his dead body. Both are likely opportunities for spammers with bad intentions.\nThe first photo was distributed by the news agency AFP after commanders for Libya’s transitional military, the National Transitional Council (NTC), said they had captured Gaddafi after invading his hometown of Sirte. On Thursday, an NTC spokesperson told the New York Times Gaddafi had been killed, but the U.S. State Department had still not confirmed his death as of 10:00 a.m. ET.\n","tags":["attack","Ghaddafi","Malware","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter Malware Attack: Photos of Dead Gaddafi"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-10-19T15:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/19/happy-feelings/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey! my friends!\nFinally my German language class is going to begin next month, long time waiting as they have been too busy, I think it took more than 4-5 months, well, wish me luck, German look likes a difficult language.\nAnd here is music video that I could not and cannot stop listening (and watching) last 2 weeks!\nHave a good times everyone\n-Omid\n","tags":["My Life","Video"],"title":"Happy feelings"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-08T14:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/08/blackhole-exploit-targeting-steves-death/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec: The sad news making the rounds these days is the death of Steve Jobs, Apple Co-founder and former CEO. His death has been a terrible loss to both Apple and Apple fans everywhere.\nSpammers are capitalizing on this incident by sending malicious links related to the news of Steve Jobs’ death. Below is a screenshot of one such spam email containing a malicious link:\nMore malicious links found relating to death spam are:\n","tags":["alert","exploit","spam","Security"],"title":"Blackhole Exploit Targeting Steve’s Death"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-07T13:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/07/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs-he-was-always-ahead-of-me/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Jobs and Schmidt connect at the introduction of the iPhone, 2007\nbusinessweek.com: The Google executive chairman admired Jobs’s passion, courage, and smarts\nWhen he went to Apple, he was basically down to 1 percent market share. Apple was near bankruptcy, the company had been for sale, there were a series of management changes. I talked to him about it. He said, “The thing that I have that no one else has is very loyal customers.” He had these fanatical people who would line up all night for a product that wasn’t any good. He figured correctly that by upgrading and investing in and broadening the portfolio, he could do it. At some level he foresaw the next 10 years.\n","tags":["Eric Schmidt","Interview"],"title":"Eric Schmidt on Steve Jobs: \"He was always ahead of me\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-10-06T13:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/10/06/facebook-scam-in-memory-of-steve-a-company-is-giving-out-50-ipads-tonight/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"“In memory of Steve, a company is giving out 50 ipads tonight…” is another Facebook scam you want to avoid.\nMore similar scam links is expected, so take care what you click on, These kind of free offers will end up in phishing or malware attacks.\nDon’t forget you should join the Omid’s Blog Facebook page, where I not only debunk hoaxes and chain letters or scams, but I also keep you up-to-date on the latest rogue applications, scams and malware attacks threatening Facebook users.\nCredit to Norman Security.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Scam: In memory of Steve, a company is giving out 50 ipads tonight"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-25T21:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/25/hoax-facebook-gold-membership-for-9-99/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: A hoax claiming that Facebook is planning to start charging users continues to spread across the social network, and has now been adapted by mischief-makers into a claim that the service will be free if users forward a message before midnight.\nDuped users are sharing the message with their online friends, believing it will help them avoid charges of between $3.99 and $9.99 per month.\n","tags":["Facebook","hoax","Social Media"],"title":"Hoax: Facebook Gold membership for $9.99"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-25T20:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/25/mac-os-x-trojan-hides-behind-malicious-pdf-disguise/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: A fascinating new example of Mac malware has been discovered, that appears to be adopting an old Windows-style disguise to fool users into running it.\nDespite the numerous times that cybercriminals have created boobytrapped PDF files that exploit vulnerabilities to infect unsuspecting users, many people still think that PDF files are somehow magically safer to open than conventional programs.\nThe OSX/Revir-B Trojan plays on this by posing as a PDF file.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Malware","PDF","Security"],"title":"Mac OS X Trojan hides behind malicious PDF disguise"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-20T14:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/20/facebook-to-launch-major-profile-redesign-at-f8/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Personally I’ve a feeling facebook is learning too much from Google Plus and its becoming too Google Plus-ish!, As we see they have created new style of lists (give me a feeling like Google Plus circle), redesigned images, new privacy options like Google plus and many more, and now Mashable wrote:\nFacebook to Launch “Major” Profile Redesign at f8\nHere’s what we know so far about the profile redesign:\n","tags":["Facebook","News"],"title":"Facebook to Launch “Major” Profile Redesign at f8"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-19T14:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/19/hacker-rattles-security-circles-21-years-old-iranian/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The building housing the Dutch company DigiNotar,\nwhich issues digital Web site certificates and\nwas hacked last month.\nThe New York Times: He claims to be 21 years old, a student of software engineering in Tehran who reveres Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and despises dissidents in his country.\n_“I’m totally independent,” he said in an e-mail exchange with The New York Times. “I just share my findings with some people in Iran. They are free to do anything they want with my findings and things I share with them, but I’m not responsible.” _He Said.\n","tags":["hack","Interview","report","Security"],"title":"Hacker Rattles Security Circles: 21 Years Old Iranian"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-16T17:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/16/one-in-four-windows-7-pc-run-out-of-date-anti-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"MSDN: One of the things we talk quite a bit about with Windows 8 is making sure Windows is a safe, secure, and reliable computing environment. We have always provided a broad range of solutions for achieving these goals and work closely with a broad range of industry partners. We continue to enhance these capabilities with Windows 8 while making sure you always have choice and control over how to protect and manage your PC. With Windows 8 we are extending the protections provided by Defender to address a broader range of potential threats. Jason Garms, the group program manager of our reliability and security team authored this post that represents work across several teams. –Steven\n","tags":["antivirus","Microsoft","Security","Windows","Windows 8"],"title":"One in four Windows 7 PC run out of date anti-malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-16T16:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/16/happy-birthday-avira-freeav/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Happy birthday Avira FreeAV! Avira free antivirus solution protecting more than 100 million customers worldwide celebrates its 12th birthday today. Soon you can benefit from new version that is in the final stage of development. Stay tuned!\n","tags":["Avira"],"title":"Happy Birthday Avira FreeAV!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-16T13:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/16/iranian-block-on-tor-traffic-quickly-foiled/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: The online privacy and security service Tor was blocked by the Iranian government late evening (local time) 13 September. This was done by adding a filter rule to the Iranian border routers which identified Tor traffic and blocked it. The blocking was quickly discovered by Tor and the project released a fix a few hours later. The fix consists of a new version of the Tor software, Tor 0.2.3.4-alpha, and once this is installed on relays and bridges, the company expects normal service to be resumed for users in Iran.\n","tags":["Censorship","Iran","Tor Project","Updates"],"title":"Iranian block on Tor traffic quickly foiled"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-14T19:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/14/utorrent-server-delivered-malware-for-two-hours-on-tuesday/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: The BitTorrent company has confirmed that its uTorrent servers were hacked on Tuesday 13 September and, for almost two hours, anyone downloading the uTorrent client software from the servers received a scareware fake anti-virus package instead. The malware package has been identified as belonging to the “Security Shield” family of scareware; once installed, it falsely informs a user that malware has been detected on their machine and requests payment in order to clean the system.\n","tags":["hack","Malware","News","P2P","Torrent","Security"],"title":"uTorrent server delivered malware for two hours on Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-14T19:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/14/adobe-closes-14-holes-in-reader-and-acrobat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Adobe has released new versions of Reader and Acrobat to close several critical security holes. Versions 10.x, 9.x and 8.x of both products for Windows, Linux and Mac are affected. Adobe recommends that Reader X and Acrobat X users update to version 10.1.1 as this version offers added protection under Windows through its sandbox. However, the vendor has also made Adobe Reader 9.4.6 and 8.3.1, as well as Adobe Acrobat 9.4.6 and 8.3.1, available to download. Adobe Reader 9.4.6 for UNIX is due to be released on 7 November.\n","tags":["Adobe","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe closes 14 holes in Reader and Acrobat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-14T19:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/14/microsoft-closes-holes-in-windows-and-office/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The H-Security: Microsoft has released two updates for Windows and three for Office to close various security holes. All five updates have only been rated “important” by the company.\nA hole in WINS enables local attackers to escalate their privileges on a system. Another patch prevents a new variant of binary planting, or DLL hijacking, attacks that can cause Windows to load DLLs from shared network volumes without the user’s permission. This allows attackers to execute code on a computer via specially crafted DLLs. Microsoft has been struggling to contain the insecure DLL loading problem with numerous patches released since mid 2010.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Microsoft Office","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows"],"title":"Microsoft closes holes in Windows and Office"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-12T14:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/12/globalsign-gives-itself-clean-bill-of-health-after-iranian-hackers-braggadocio/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Following the widely-publicised disgrace of Dutch digital certificate issuer DigiNotar, a person calling himself ComodoHacker claimed that he’d breached four other Certificate Authorities (CAs), too.\nOnly one of these CAs was named: GlobalSign, the world’s fifth-biggest issuer of digital certificates.\nIn my opinion, GlobalSign would have been justified in ignoring this claim altogether.\nIt comes across as a stream of made-up, self-serving puffery, including bluster like this:\nYou see? I’m so smart, sharp, dangerous, powerful, etc. huh?\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"GlobalSign gives itself clean bill of health after Iranian hacker's braggadocio"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-08T22:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/08/yes-microsoft-did-change-the-world-more-than-apple/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Business Insider: A new poll in France says 7 out of 10 people think Microsoft did more to change the world than Apple. We think we would have similar results in other countries, if only because a lot more people (still!) use Microsoft products than Apple products, at least for personal computing which is (still!) the most important part of computing.\nIt’s hard to see a mention of Steve Jobs without the worlds “change the world” or “changing an industry.” And let’s give him his due. Let’s give him his due as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history, as an amazing entrepreneur and visionary who left many “dents” in the universe. And he did change many industries, like music, film, and yes, personal computing.\n","tags":["Apple","Microsoft","report","review"],"title":"Yes, Microsoft Did Change The World More Than Apple"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-06T20:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/06/pink-claims-her-facebook-page-was-hacked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Pop singer Pink has posted an angry message to hackers, who she claims stole photographs from her Facebook page.\nBut was Pink’s Facebook page really hacked, or was she just one of the many people who have been careless with their privacy settings?\nThe Grammy award-winning singer, famous for hit records such as “Get the party started” and “God is a DJ”, posted on Twitter about the incident, but didn’t clarify the nature of the photos the hackers might have accessed.\n","tags":["celeb","Facebook","hack","report","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Pink claims her Facebook page was ‘hacked'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-06T18:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/06/comodohacker-responsible-for-diginotar-attack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" TheHackerNews.com: The hacker warns the Internet community that he has access to 4 other high-profile CAs, among them being GlobalSign, a certification authority from the U.S. He threatens that he will use his power over the companies to issue false certificates, which will later become the weapon of his revenge against countries who deserve it.In his own words, he said “I won’t talk so many detail for now, just I wanted to let the world know that ANYTHING you do will have consequences, ANYTHING your country did in past, you have to pay for it…”. Complete Message here.\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"ComodoHacker responsible for DigiNotar Attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T17:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/german-censors-approve-new-action-game/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" rockpapershotgun.com: Are you a German teenager? Then do we have some good news for you! After a short seventeen year-long wait, you are now legally allowed to buy a copy of Doom. And, indeed, Doom can now be stocked in normal shops, not just ones ominously deemed ‘adults-only’ – which was basically putting the game right up there with porn.\nAs of yesterday, Germany’s Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprufstelle) has removed Doom – and Doom II – from its list of ‘controlled’ games, following an appeal by id’s owners Bethesda. Their reasoning? Because the Bundesprufstelle thinks Doom is ‘now only of artistic and scientific interest and will not appeal to youngsters’, according to the BBC.\n","tags":["Gaming","Germany","report"],"title":"German Censors Approve New Action Game"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T16:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/happy-third-birthday-chrome/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Chrome Blog: It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since we launched our open source web browser, Chrome.\nIn that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers:\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","News","review"],"title":"Happy third birthday, Chrome!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T16:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/wikileaks-website-targeted-by-hackers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" TechSpot: Wikileaks found itself the victim of a cyberattack on Tuesday, shortly after the release of thousands of US State Department communications. News broke of the attack on their Twitter page, which offered another link to the communications, and a message stating “WikiLeaks.org is presently under attack.”\nIt is likely that they were hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, the most commonly used method by hackers to cause disruption to websites. It works by flooding the servers with traffic, overloading them, and subsequently causing the servers to crash, or become otherwise unreachable.\n","tags":["hack","report","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"Wikileaks website targeted by hackers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T15:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/iphone-5-giveaways-on-facebook-a-scam-or-what/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Even if it hasn’t been officially announced yet, and certainly isn’t available to the general public (unless an Apple employee loses a test model in a bar), there are plenty of scammers out there trying to trick you into believing you can get a free iPhone 5.\nHere’s just a sample of the pages on Facebook claiming to be an iPhone 5 giveaway. Typically they are trying to trick you into clicking on links, driving traffic to online surveys which earns them revenue.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","Apple","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"iPhone 5 giveaways on Facebook – a scam or what?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T14:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/facebook-to-launch-music-service-on-september-22/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" TechSpot: Facebook plans to launch a music service on September 22, which happens to coincide with the company’s F8 conference. The news comes via CNBC’s twitter feed which reported the headline earlier today.\nA quick blurb on CNBC’s website also mentions the pending music service launch, suggesting that Facebook won’t actually host the music, but will partner with a provider to offer the service.\nThere isn’t much more to go on at the moment, but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard such rumors. Last month, Facebook announced a video calling feature powered by Skype. Software developer Jeff Ross panned through the program’s code and found references to an app called Facebook Vibes which connects with a music download dialog. Ross posted the following statement on his blog.\n","tags":["Announcement","Facebook","Music","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook to launch music service on September 22"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T12:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/call-of-duty-mw3-to-use-steamworks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" rockpapershotgun.com: This just came in from Valve: “The PC version of the product will be powered with Steamworks for both the digital and tangible versions of the game and, as with all Steamworks titles, offline play will also be supported along with Auto-Updating, Achievements, and more. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will also support dedicated servers on day 1.”\nBetter, I suppose. The game is out November 8th.\n","tags":["Announcement","Gaming","News","report","Steam"],"title":"Call of Duty: MW3 To Use Steamworks"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T10:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/mail-ru-protects-e-mail-users-with-wot-reputation-data/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Web of Trust (WOT), the world’s leading website reputation rating service, and Mail.ru Group, Russia’s largest Internet company, have partnered together to improve online protection for 300 million people using Russia’s leading free e-mail service, Mail.ru. All links contained in emails received by Mail.ru users are checked through WOT’s reputation database to warn users from following untrustworthy links that could lead to scams, identity theft, malware and other online threats.\n","tags":["Announcement","Email","Security","WOT"],"title":"Mail.ru protects e-mail users with WOT reputation data"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T09:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/woman-sues-after-firm-tracking-stolen-laptop-records-nude-video-chats/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Imagine the scene.\nYou buy a second-hand laptop using it to, among other things, have secret sexy video chats with your significant other. Unbeknownst to you, naked photos of you are being taken by a company hired to track down the stolen laptop.\nOuch.\nThis is what has happened to Ohio-based Susan Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend.\nAbsolute Software is in the business of helping people recover their computers. Fair enough. But is taking nude snaps of the person using the stolen laptop a step too far?\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"Woman sues after firm tracking stolen laptop records nude video chats"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-09-01T09:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/09/01/julianne-hough-leaked-photos-published-after-phone-hack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Julianne Hough is famous in the United States not just for being an actress and country music singer, and dating “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, but also for having won ABC’s “Dancing with the stars” TV show twice.\nSo, hardly the kind of woman who you would think would need to resort to a cheap publicity stunt to raise her profile.\nBut no doubt there are skeptics who are right now wondering if the news that her mobile phone was “hacked” and one hundred of her private photographs published on the net is nothing more than a way of gaining attention.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","leak","report","Security"],"title":"Julianne Hough leaked photos published after phone hack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-31T22:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/kernel-org-compromised/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Read it yourself…\n1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 ———- Forwarded message ———- From: J.H. Date: 2011/8/29 Subject: [kernel.org users] [KORG] Master back-end break-in To: users@kernel.org —–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—– Hash: SHA1 Afternoon Everyone, As you can guess from the subject line, I've not had what many would consider a “good” day. Earlier today discovered a trojan existing on HPA's personal colo machine, as well as hera. Upon some investigation there are a couple of kernel.org boxes, specifically hera and odin1, with potential pre-cursors on demeter2, zeus1 and zeus2, that have been hit by this. As it stands right now, HPA is working on cleaning his box, and I'm working on hera (odin1 and zeus1 are out of rotation still for other reasons), mainly so that if one of us finds something of interest, we can deal with it and compare notes on the other box. Points of interest: – – Break-in seems to have initially occurred no later than August 12th – – Files belonging to ssh (openssh, openssh-server and openssh-clients) were modified and running live. These have been uninstalled and removed, all processes were killed and known good copies were reinstalled. That said all users may wish to consider taking this opportunity to change their passwords and update ssh keys (particularly if you had an ssh private key on hera). This seems to have occurred on or around August 19th. – – A trojan startup file was added to rc3.d – – User interactions were logged, as well as some exploit code. We have retained this for now. – – Trojan initially discovered due to the Xnest /dev/mem error message w/o Xnest installed; have been seen on other systems. It is unclear if systems that exhibit this message are susceptible, compromised or not. If you see this, and you don't have Xnest installed, please investigate. – – It \\*appears\\* that 3.1-rc2 might have blocked the exploit injector, we don't know if this is intentional or a side affect of another bugfix or change. – – System is being verified from backups, signatures, etc. As of right now things look correct, however we may take the system down soon to do a full reinstall and for more invasive checking. – – As a precaution a number of packages have been removed from the system, if something was removed that you were using please let us know so we can put it back. – – At this time we do not know the vector that was used to get into the systems, but the attackers had gained root access level privileges. That's what we know right now, some of the recent instabilities may have been caused by these intrusions, and we are looking into everything. If you are on the box, keep an eye out, and if you see something please let us know immediately. Beyond that, verify your git trees and make sure things are correct. – – John ‘Warthog9' Hawley Chief Kernel.org Administrator —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—– Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora – http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk5a5U0ACgkQ/E3kyWU9dif+1ACfYPlgq/keFrFO77AmQVduKGwx TAcAnRAu6nHt74+5aC+fPeb8aT0hcy2K =Semd —–END PGP SIGNATURE—– ","tags":["kernel.org","report","Security"],"title":"kernel.org compromised"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-31T22:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/an-update-on-attempted-man-in-the-middle-attacks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google: Today we received reports of attempted SSL man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks against Google users, whereby someone tried to get between them and encrypted Google services. The people affected were primarily located in Iran. The attacker used a fraudulent SSL certificate issued by DigiNotar, a root certificate authority that should not issue certificates for Google (and has since revoked it).\nGoogle Chrome users were protected from this attack because Chrome was able to detect the fraudulent certificate.\n","tags":["attack","Google","hack","Iran","report","SSL","Security"],"title":"An update on attempted man-in-the-middle attacks"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-31T20:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/panda-cloud-antivirus-makes-firewall-social/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews.com: Panda Security has released Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.9.1 Beta, a preview of its forthcoming 2.0 release. The beta sees Panda’s lightweight free cloud-based antivirus tool add firewall protection for the first time.\nThe new firewall is community based, which means it’s capable of detecting known processes and settings appropriate levels of protection for them without bothering the end user with a pop-up alert. The new firewall is visible from a new tab on the Panda Cloud Antivirus interface.\n","tags":["Beta","Cloud","panda","review","Security"],"title":"Panda Cloud Antivirus makes firewall social"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-31T18:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/bloggers-fresh-new-look/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Blogger Buzz: As you may have heard, things are starting to look a little different across many Google products—and today, Blogger is the next product to get a makeover.\nIt’s been a few years since we made major updates to Blogger’s look and feel, and there’s a lot more to these changes than just shiny new graphics. We’ve rewritten the entire editing and management experience from scratch so it’s faster and more efficient for you—and easier for us to update and improve over time.\n","tags":["Blogger","Blogging","BLOGS","Google","News"],"title":"Blogger’s fresh new look"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-31T18:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/using-gmail-calendar-and-docs-without-an-internet-connection/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Gmail Blog: The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an Internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.\n","tags":["Announcement","Gmail","Google","News","offline","suggestion"],"title":"Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an Internet connection"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-08-31T17:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/i-want-ich-will/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I think being well known all over the world is not everything, sometimes I wish fewer people know but that smart group of people that know me, trust me, believe me, hear me, believe me as a human not as a service or an object!It often happens that in a party when all people are talking about various topics, the only topic will talk to me is computer stuff, Yes computer is my favorite topic and I like it and I can talk about it for long time non-stop, but when someone know nothing about computer try talk to me about computer, it happens that I feel this is kind of a fake respect to me, they want to help me feel better in their meeting or party bla bla…\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I want / Ich Will !"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-31T15:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/31/firefox-thunderbird-and-seamoney-blacklist-bad-diginotar-ssl-certificates/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla Security Blog: Mozilla just released an update to Firefox for Desktop, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. Updates are now available for:\nFirefox for Windows, Mac and Linux (final release) Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux (3.6.21 final release) Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac and Linux Firefox Nightly for Windows, Mac and Linux SeaMonkey (2.3.2) Thunderbird (6.0.1) We strongly recommend that all users upgrade to these releases.\nIf you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. Users can also manually check for updates if they do not want to wait for the automatic update.\n","tags":["Firefox","Google","Mozilla","SeaMoney","Security","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMoney blacklist bad DigiNotar SSL certificates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-30T08:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/30/create-pdf-files-on-your-iphone-and-ipad-now/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Acrobat Blog: We are excited to announce that Adobe CreatePDF application is now available on iOS. With this, Adobe brings rich, high-fidelity and Acrobat-like PDF creation to the iOS devices. You can now convert all your documents on iPad, iPhone \u0026 iPod touch devices to PDF for reliable, secure sharing and viewing across PCs, tablets \u0026 Smartphones.\nThe application uses Adobe’s online PDF Creation service for conversion of files to PDF thereby ensuring no compromise on quality and performance.\n","tags":["Adobe","PDF","suggestion"],"title":"Create PDF files on your iPhone and iPad now"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-29T21:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/29/hacker-steals-user-data-from-nokia-developer-forum/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: A vulnerability in its forum software has been exploited by a hacker to compromise mobile phone maker Nokia‘s developer forum. The attacker used SQL injection to access the forum database at developer.nokia.com and, according to Nokia, obtained email addresses of registered users. Where configured to be publicly available, the table also includes details such as the user’s date of birth, web site URL and Skype, ICQ or other IM username; this is reported to be the case for around 7 per cent of users. The database did not contain passwords or credit card information. The issue does not, according to Nokia, affect any other Nokia accounts.\n","tags":["attack","hack","Nokia","report","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Hacker steals user data from Nokia developer forum"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-29T20:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/29/screenshots-of-chinese-hacking-tool/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Schneier on Security: It’s hard to know how serious this really is:\nThe screenshots appear as B-roll footage in the documentary for six seconds­between 11:04 and 11:10 minutes — showing custom built Chinese software apparently launching a cyber-attack against the main website of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, by using a compromised IP address belonging to a United States university. As of Aug. 22 at 1:30pm EDT, in addition to Youtube, the whole documentary is available on the CCTV website.\n","tags":["hack","review","screenshot","Security"],"title":"Screenshots of Chinese hacking tool"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-29T14:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/29/new-worm-targeting-weak-passwords-on-remote-desktop-connections-port-3389/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft Malware Protection Center: We’ve had reports of a new worm in the wild and that generates increased RDP traffic for our users on port 3389. Although the overall numbers of computers reporting detections are low in comparison to more established malware families, the traffic it generates is noticeable. The worm is detected as Worm:Win32/Morto.A and you can see a detailed description of at http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Worm%3aWin32%2fMorto.A.\nMorto attempts to compromise Remote Desktop connections in order to penetrate remote systems, by exploiting weak administrator passwords. Once a new system is compromised, it connects to a remote server in order to download additional information and update its components. It also terminates processes for locally running security applications in order to ensure its activity continues uninterrupted. Affected users should note that a reboot may be required in order to complete the cleaning process.\n","tags":["advice","analyze","Malware","Microsoft","Password","review","Security"],"title":"New worm targeting weak passwords on Remote Desktop connections (port 3389)"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-08-27T22:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/27/strings-of-my-mind/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I posted this without spell-check or grammar check, without review etc, just think and write and post:\nI think its not just me that sometimes get confused in his life, Don’t know what to do and what should not do, It happen for everyone and that’s life, now its like that for me.\nIt’s about 5-6 years that I finished my school, and yet nothing has happened in my life, no stable job, yet I own nothing in my life, not a Home or a room, not a car or anything else that worth anything. Don’t get me wrong, money is not all, during these years I’ve earned nothing, either money or certified or reputation or even a good routine in my life.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Strings of my mind"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-26T19:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/26/start-of-avira-12-betatest/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Start of AV 12 Betatest!\nIt starts from today and ends on 29th of September 2011.\nFinally after a long time Avira started Betatest of Avira AntiVir 12.\nIf you would like to test this build and feature beta releases, you can register in Avira BetaCenter: http://betacenter.avira.com\nMore Info: http://techblog.avira.com/2011/09/08/avira-products-version-2012-for-windows-now-available-for-beta-testing/en/\n","tags":["Avira","Beta","review"],"title":"Start of Avira 12 Betatest!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-25T18:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/25/facebook-makes-a-move-toward-security/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Sunbelt: Facebook recently published a guide for it’s users on how to secure their online accounts from anything that threatens one’s Facebook security. Among those covered are Wall, Chat, and Comment spams, weak passwords, fake applications, and account hacking. Personally, I’m quite happy that Facebook is actually doing something that concerns user security, despite it being quite late come to think about it. Still, better to have something than nothing.\n","tags":["advice","Facebook","Security"],"title":"Facebook Makes a Move Toward Security"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-25T18:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/25/phpmyadmin-updates-close-xss-hole/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: The phpMyAdmin developers have announced the release of versions 3.4.4 and 3.3.10.4 of their open source database administration tool. According to the security advisory, these maintenance and security updates close a hole (CVE-2011-3181) in the Tracking feature that leads to multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.\nThe exploit was discovered by Norman Hippert and is caused due to improper sanitisation when input is passed to the table, column and index names. For an attack to be successful, an attacker must be logged in via phpMyAdmin. Versions 3.3.0 to 3.4.3.2 are affected and the developers consider the problem to be serious. Updating to phpMyAdmin 3.3.10.4 or 3.4.4 fixes the problem. Alternatively, users can apply the provided patches.\n","tags":["PHP","Security","Updates"],"title":"phpMyAdmin updates close XSS hole"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-25T18:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/25/jobs-opportunities-for-apple-scammers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLabs: Steve Jobs has now done what many of us thought would happen sooner or later – stepped off the very prestigious CEO plinth, taking a less taxing role as chairman of the Apple board. The new CEO will be Jobs’ right-hand man Tim Cook.\nDespite Jobs having been on medical leave since January this year, the markets were all a tumble once the news of his resignation hit the markets, with Apple share prices dipping at one point by 5%.\n","tags":["Apple","Security"],"title":"Jobs opportunities for Apple scammers?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-25T10:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/25/java-6-update-27-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Java™ SE 6 Update 27\nThe full internal version number for this update release is 1.6.0_27-b07 (where “b” means “build”). The external version number is 6u27.\nHighlights\nThis update release contains important enhancements for Java applications:\nImproved performance and stability Certification for Firefox 5 Update release notes: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/6u27-relnotes-444147.html\nComplete bug fix list: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/2col/6u27bugfixes-444150.html\n","tags":["Java","Oracle","Security","Updates"],"title":"Java 6 Update 27 released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-25T10:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/25/microsoft-to-improve-file-management-processes-in-windows-8/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows 8 News Blog: The recently created Building Windows 8 blog seems to be up in full swing, with new articles about the upcoming operating system being released regularly. Steven Sinofsky revealed in “Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete” that Microsoft intents to improve file management processes under Windows 8.\nAccording to Steven, Microsoft had three goals to improve the copy experience:\nOne place to manage all copy jobs: Create one unified experience for managing and monitoring ongoing copy operations. Clear and concise: Remove distractions and give people the key information they need. User in control: Put people in control of their copy operations. Consolidating the copy experience is a great idea. This means that you won’t have to deal with multiple copying windows when you run multiple copy or move operations in the operating system. All copy jobs are now consolidated in one screen.\n","tags":["Announcement","Beta","Microsoft","News","review","Windows","Windows 8"],"title":"Microsoft To Improve File Management Processes In Windows 8"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-20T18:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/20/restricting-access-to-net-resources-for-good-reasons/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"This article is originally posted at Norman Security Blog, Credit to my friend ‘Pondus’ for sharing.\nIntroduction\nDuring recent months, we have seen several examples of attempts and suggestions to restrict access to different types of net resources, and in some cases the Internet itself. Is this a method that accomplishes its end, or is it more of a “shooting the messenger” type of action?\nWe shall give some examples and discuss different issues in this article.\n","tags":["advice","attack","review","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Restricting access to net resources for \"good reasons\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-16T20:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/16/german-federal-office-for-information-security-warns-of-hacked-online-shops/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is warning of online shops which infect users with malicious software by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the user’s browser, operating system or applications. The affected shops have themselves been hacked by attackers exploiting security vulnerabilities in outdated versions of open source online shop software osCommerce.\nAs reported by The H two weeks ago, osCommerce shops are currently being hacked en masse. The vulnerabilities used for the hack were fixed in November last year with the release of osCommerce 2.3, but many companies running online shops have yet to update to a secure version.\n","tags":["Browsers","Germany","Phishing","report","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"German Federal Office for Information Security warns of hacked online shops"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-15T21:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/15/update-google-buys-motorola/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Google Operating System Blog: Google found a way to solve the problem of Android patents and it’s only three times more expensive than acquiring the Nortel patents: buying Motorola for $12.5 billion.\n“Motorola has a history of over 80 years of innovation in communications technology and products, and in the development of intellectual property, which have helped drive the remarkable revolution in mobile computing we are all enjoying today. (…) In 2008, Motorola bet big on Android as the sole operating system across all of its smartphone devices. It was a smart bet and we’re thrilled at the success they’ve achieved so far,” says Google’s CEO, Larry Page.\n","tags":["business","follow up","Google","Mobile","Motorola Mobility","report"],"title":"Update: Google Buys Motorola"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-15T20:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/15/mozilla-plans-to-hide-firefox-version/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" gHacks: One “by-product” of the rapid release cycle of the Firefox web browser is the version number increase that goes along with every new release of the web browser. Firefox this year jumped from Firefox 3 all the way to the latest version Firefox 8, and we are not even at the end of the year.\nMozilla interestingly enough plans to hide the version number in the Firefox web browser. Asa Dotzler added an entry to Bugzilla to remove the version of the browser from the about Window dialog in the browser.\n","tags":["Beta","Firefox","Mozilla","News","review"],"title":"Mozilla Plans To Hide Firefox Version"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-15T19:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/15/firefox-6-released-early/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Firefox 6 isn’t scheduled to be released until Tuesday, but Mozilla has uploaded installation files to a FTP server for those who want to get their hands on the upgraded browser early.\nAlthough the new version doesn’t sport any major UI changes, the browser is reportedly 20% faster than Firefox 5. Startup time has been improved, especially for those with lots of tabs and groups. Users can now determine whether they want to load their tab groups when launching the browser, or load them within the Panorama grouping tool.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Mozilla","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 6 Released Early"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-15T19:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/15/google-buys-motorola-mobility-androids-top-supporter/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews: Google thoroughly rocked the smartphone world on Monday morning by announcing it will be acquiring Android phone maker Motorola Mobility for approximately $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility has existed as a standalone entity for just 8 months, and has produced some of the most successful Android smartphones such as the first Droidwith Verizon Wireless.\nMost importantly, though, Motorola Mobility holds one of the most valuable wireless patent portfolios in the business, and this acquisition serves as a follow up to the Nortel Patent auction where Google placed bids, but lost out to a consortium of bidders that included Apple, EMC, Microsoft, Ericsson, Research in Motion, and Sony.\n","tags":["Android","business","Google","Mobile","Motorola Mobility"],"title":"Google buys Motorola Mobility, Android's top supporter"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-14T21:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/14/twitter-finally-released-a-stalkers-app-no-its-a-phishing-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Sophos Labs: Twitter users are being hit today by messages claiming to link to a new app from Twitter which will track your stalkers.\nHowever, the messages are really designed to steal your Twitter usernames and passwords.\nHere’s a typical message that users are seeing:\nTwitter finally released an app that tracks your “Stalkers” get it here [LINK]\nIf you click on the link you are taken to what appears to be a legitimate Twitter page, asking you to confirm your username and password before the “Stalkers” app can access your account.\n","tags":["advice","Password","Phishing","review","scam","Security","Social Media","spam","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter finally released a \"Stalkers\" app? No, it's a phishing scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-13T15:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/13/google-apps-highlights-8122011/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that Google post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights” and subscribe to the series.\nThis week we have news from the Gmail and Google Docs teams, which both made interface changes to streamline how you use those applications. We also introduced some new keyboard shortcuts and made improvements to spreadsheet charts and functions.\nNew preview pane in Gmail Labs\nThe Gmail team has heard requests from many of you for an inbox preview pane, and last Thursday we introduced this option as a Gmail Lab. Now you can quickly scroll through a list of messages and see their contents, marking mail as “read” as you go. Once you enable this feature from the Labs area in Settings, you can choose between a vertical or horizontal split in your Gmail window.\n","tags":["Announcement","Gmail","Google","Mobile","News","report"],"title":"Google Apps highlights – 8/12/2011"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-12T20:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/12/expert-says-adobe-omits-mention-of-400-flash-player-flaws/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Officially, Adobe’s current update for Flash Player has closed only 13 holes, but unofficially it is said to have closed several hundred. Security specialist Tavis Ormandy, who works for Google, claims that he discovered 400 holes and notified Adobe of them. The specialist has now complained that, while the holes have been closed, they haven’t been mentioned in the official advisory, and he hasn’t been given credit for their discovery.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Google","report","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Expert says Adobe omits mention of 400 Flash Player flaws"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-12T09:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/12/protect-your-kids-from-cyber-predators/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Posted by the Stop. Think. Connect. Campaign on Homeland Security\nCyber predators are real. They use the anonymity of the Internet to target victims, especially today’s youth, with unwanted solicitations, harassment, and fraud. It’s important that parents discuss ways to stay safe online with their children, particularly before they use social networking sites.\nUS-CERT offers the following tips for parents to help ensure their children stay safe online:\nMonitor computer activity – Keep your computer in an open area and be aware of what your children are doing, including who they’re talking to and what websites they’re visiting. Inform children of online risks – Discuss appropriate Internet behavior that is suitable for the child’s age, knowledge, and maturity. Talk to children about the dangers and risks of the Internet so that they recognize suspicious activity and secure their personal information. Keep lines of communication open – Let your children know that they can approach you with any questions or concerns about behaviors or problems they may have encountered on the Internet. Stop. Think. Connect. Protect yourself and help keep the web a safer place for everyone. For more information on Stop.Think.Connect., please visit www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect.\n","tags":["advice","Security"],"title":"Protect Your Kids from Cyber Predators"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-10T15:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/10/half-of-corporate-adobe-reader-users-run-outdated-versions/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" SOFTPEDIA: According to statistics gathered by cloud security provider Zscaler, 56.4% of enterprise users have out of date Adobe Reader plug-in versions inside their browsers.\nThe company gathered statistics about browser plug-ins and presented the results in its “State of the Web” report [pdf] for the second quarter of 2011.\n“Nearly every browser is running some combination of plug-ins, add-ons or extensions. As with most software, older versions of plug-ins typically have more security vulnerabilities. This adds up to a tempting target for hackers,” the company warns.\n","tags":["Adobe","Browsers","corporate","plugins","report","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Half of Corporate Adobe Reader Users Run Outdated Versions"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-09T19:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/09/fake-firefox-update-includes-password-stealing-trojan/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Security specialist Sophos reports that it has discovered new spam email messages that claim to be an advisory related to an update to the open source Firefox web browser. The fake advisory asks users to update their Firefox installations, “for security reasons”, and includes a download link to the supposed update.\nAccording to Graham Cluley of Sophos, the download leads to an executable file that bundles an installer for the Windows version of Firefox 5.0.1 and a password-stealing trojan (Troj/PWS-BSF). As noted by Cluley, users should always exercise caution when clicking on links in emails.\n","tags":["Firefox","Malware","Mozilla","Security","trojan","Vulnerability"],"title":"Fake Firefox update includes password-stealing trojan"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-05T14:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/05/get-ready-for-microsoft-13-updates-for-august-patch-tuesday/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Hacker News: Microsoft has announced that it will release 13 bulletins to address 22 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, .NET and Visual Studio on its next Patch Tuesday. Another “critical” bulletin affects Windows server operating systems, and addresses a code-execution risk on unpatched systems. Also of note is an update restricted to newer versions of Windows (Windows 7 and Windows 2008) that tackles a potential, though difficult to exploit, code-execution risk.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Security","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows"],"title":"Get Ready for Microsoft 13 updates for August Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-04T18:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/04/facebook-captcha-fail/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Facebook has taken security to a whole new level.\nI think this speaks for itself.\n","tags":["Facebook","Fun","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook CAPTCHA fail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-04T14:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/04/quicktime-7-7-closes-security-holes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Security Online: Version 7.7 of QuickTime is now available for users running Windows XP SP2 or later and Mac OS X v10.5.8 Leopard. The maintenance and security update addresses a total of 14 security vulnerabilities in the multimedia application.\nQuickTime 7.7 closes holes on both platforms that could be used by an attacker to, for example, crash the application or execute arbitrary code on a victim’s system. For an attack to be successful, a victim must first open a specially crafted file or a malicious web site. A cross-origin issue that may lead to the disclosure of video data from another web site has also been fixed. The company notes that, for Mac OS X 10.6 users, these holes have already been addressed in 10.6.8; the latest version of Mac OS X, 10.7 Lion, is not affected.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","QuickTime","Security","Updates","Windows"],"title":"QuickTime 7.7 closes security holes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-08-02T17:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/08/02/a-major-update-in-google-chrome-instant-page-and-5200-revisions/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Google Chrome team announced the arrival of Chrome 13.0.782.107 to the Stable Channel for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame. Spanning 5200+ revisions, Chrome 13, contains some exciting new features like Instant Page rendering. To find out about other new features, check out the Official Chrome Blog.\nChange log is available here: Google Chrome Releases: Stable Channel Update\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"A major update in Google Chrome: Instant Page and 5200+ revisions"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-07-29T16:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/07/29/microsoft-adds-raw-photo-file-support-to-windows/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft announced the release of a Camera Codec pack for Windows that offers support for the RAW file format from within Windows Explorer as well as Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011. The Codec Pack has support for more than 120 RAW file formats from brands such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax, Leica, Minolta, Panasonic, and Espon. The Codec Pack will allow you to generate thumbnail images from RAW files, once it is installed.\n","tags":["Announcement","Codec","Microsoft","News","Offer","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Vista"],"title":"Microsoft adds RAW photo file support to Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-07-25T15:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/07/25/windows-8-the-death-of-malware-the-death-of-anti-malware/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"BetaNews: There is a lot of buzz about a recent set of tests by NSS Labs that show the Smartscreen reputation system in Internet Explorer 9 head and shoulders and most of the rest of the body above the competition in blocking malware on the web.\nI think the results of the test are even more important than they seem, considering previous reports that Microsoft plans to make Smartscreen a base part of Windows 8. This would extend parts of the protection to any executable hitting the file system. This would be big news.\n","tags":["Beta","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","review","SmartScreen","Windows 8","Security"],"title":"Windows 8: The death of malware? The death of anti-malware?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-07-23T19:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/07/23/anonplus-anonymouss-social-network-is-hacked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"My Personal Opinion: I doubt if that site is really their official website or not\nSophos Labs: Within days of the hacktivist group Anonymous announcing it was setting up its own social network (after being unceremoniously booted off Google+), its plans have taken a somewhat humiliating turn.\nAnonPlus, Anonymous’s planned social network, has been defaced by rival hackers.\nA group of hackers apparently based in Turkey replaced AnonPlus’s main webpage with an image of a dog wearing a suit, mocking the more normal Anonymous logo, and messages in Turkish and English:\n","tags":["Anonymous","hack","report","Security"],"title":"AnonPlus, Anonymous's social network, is hacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-07-22T15:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/07/22/anonymous-hacks-nato-servers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Anonymous claims to have stolen around a gigabyte of classified NATO data\nThe H-Online Security wrote: In a post on Twitter, the Anonymous hacker group said that it has managed to steal a number of secret documents from one of NATO‘s servers. As proof, Anonymous published two PDF documents from 2007 and 2008 that are allegedly from NATO. The classification “NATO Restricted” suggests that the documents are intended only for circulation within the organisation – if they are genuine. The hacktivists say they copied a gigabyte of data in total, but added that it would be “irresponsible” to publish most of the material.\n","tags":["Anonymous","hack","NATO","News","report","Security"],"title":"Anonymous hacks NATO servers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-07-20T14:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/07/20/using-data-to-protect-people-from-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This is an article posted in Google Online Security Blog, it’s about unusual traffics being sent from infected computers during search or web surfing, if you think this story applies to you too, try to clean your computers from malwares by following my manual here in my website: Malware Removal\n(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)\nThe Internet brings remarkable benefits to society. Unfortunately, some people use it for harm and their own gain at the expense of others. We believe in the power of the web and information, and we work every day to detect potential abuse of our services and ward off attacks.\n","tags":["Google","Malware","Security"],"title":"Using data to protect people from malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-06-14T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/06/14/the-top-10-passcodes-you-should-never-use-on-your-iphone/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Are you one of the many people who is using a dangerously easy-to-guess passcode on your iPhone?\nMaybe you should do something about it – sooner rather than later.\nThe warning comes after new research suggested that 15% of all iPhone owners use one of just ten passwords on their lock screen:\nApple iPhone app developer Daniel Amitay published the interesting research, looking at the four digit passcodes that users choose to secure their systems with.\n","tags":["Apple","Security","iPhone"],"title":"The top 10 passcodes you should never use on your iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-06-04T09:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/06/04/the-old-dogs-are-still-in-learning-mode/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Norman Security Blog wrote a good article about Fake AVs and their new variants and how to protect ourselves, Credit to my friend, Pondus, for sharing this:\nBackground\nFake antimalware has become a profitable industry for the cybercriminals. New variants appear on a daily basis, and new techniques for tricking the users are fine-tuned.\nA few weeks ago we wrote in our security article – Cybercriminals focus on new targets – about fake antimalware for Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. In its security update 2011-003 for Mac OS X, available 31 May, Apple enhanced considerably its protection against malware. This includes the ability to automatically download new malware signatures, similar to the functionality found in standard antimalware tools. This signifies that Apple now regards its Mac OS X platform as a serious target for cybercriminals.\n","tags":["review","rogue software","Security"],"title":"The old dogs are still in learning mode"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-06-03T14:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/06/03/microsoft-standalone-system-sweeper/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"ghacks.net: Microsoft has just released a beta of a system recovery software. Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper has been designed to aid users in starting an infected PC and performing offline malware scans to remove viruses, trojans, rootkits and other forms of malware effectively. It is also used if malware is hindering the user to install or start an antivirus software on the infected system, or if the applications used to detect malware are not able to find the malware on the PC.\n","tags":["Microsoft","News","Security","Security Essentials"],"title":"Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-05-24T14:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/05/24/no-more-offline-gmail-in-google-chrome/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System Blog wrote:\nChrome 12, the upcoming version of Google’s browser which is likely to be released today, removes a useful feature: the built-in Gears plugin. While most Google services dropped support for Gears and removed offline access, Gears is still being used in Gmail. Google no longer maintains Gears, which is now legacy software, and focuses on implementing offline support using HTML5.\nRead the whole story in: Google Operation System Blog\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","Google Chrome"],"title":"No More Offline Gmail in Google Chrome"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-05-22T21:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/05/22/everyone-need-a-job-me-too/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey my blog readers!\nHow is it going? Did enjoy your days? What’s new in your life?\nA paid job is something essential for everyone, especially for a man in my age, I need to start my own life and need enough money for that so I must be looking for a paid job, I did look for that and tried some, yet I’ve had no luck. Once after finishing my school I started working at IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting – Iran’s national TV/Radio) and after working 9 months in there I found that it’s not the job I need, because of 2 reason, one is that I want to work for myself and not someone else, another reason is that there has been some people in there that I did not like, maybe they were not bad people, just not like me so I could not stay in there.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Everyone need a job, me too"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-05-20T14:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/05/20/facebook-keeping-you-safe-from-scams-and-spam/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook Security: Facebook is committed to bringing you a safe experience on the Internet, and today we are announcing several new features to help protect you while online.\nPartnership with Web of Trust\nFirst, we’re happy to announce a partnership with Web of Trust\n. Web of Trust is a free safe surfing tool that tells you which websites you can trust based on the ratings supplied by other Web of Trust community members. Facebook already has a system that automatically scans links to determine whether the websites associated with those links are spammy or contain malware.\n","tags":["Facebook","Privacy","News","Security","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook: Keeping You Safe from Scams and Spam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-05-10T12:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/05/10/microsoft-heading-for-8bn-skype-acquisition/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" V3.co.uk: Microsoft is a whisker away from an $8bn deal to buy VoIP firm Skype in its biggest ever foray into the acquisition market, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.\nThe deal, which would total around $8.5bn when including Skype’s long-term debt, could be signed as early as Tuesday, people familiar with the matter told the paper.\nMicrosoft’s biggest acquisition to date is the $6bn paid in 2007 to buy online advertising firm aQuantive.\n","tags":["analyze","business","Microsoft","Skype"],"title":"Microsoft heading for $8bn Skype acquisition"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-05-05T19:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/05/05/the-seamless-automagical-future-of-software-updates/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Gizmodo: OS X Lion is coming to the Mac App Store, ushering in a new era of digital distribution for their desktop operating system. And rumors are flying that iOS devices will soon receive over-the-air updates. If we had to smash these two pieces of information together and speculate about the future a little bit, we’d say Apple is heading down a path to automatic background updates for all of their operating systems. Hardcore nerds would hate this to be sure, but for the average user, it’s a good thing.\n","tags":["Apple","apple app store","Mac OS X","review","rumor","Updates"],"title":"The Seamless, Automagical Future of Software Updates"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-04-29T14:33:57Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/29/atb-released-distant-earth/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"“Distant Earth” is ATB’s 9th studio album, which was released on the 29th of April 2011, by Kontor Records. It features 2 CDs in the standard edition, 3 CDs in the limited edition, and 3 CDs + 5 ATB signed postcards + ATB bracelet in the FanBox Limited Edition (which can be ordered on Amazon and it is limited to 2000 copies). Also, there is another 2 CD digipack version that comes with an ATB sticker and it’s available only in Germany.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"ATB Released `Distant Earth`"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-27T17:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/27/google-chrome-stable-11-is-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Google Chrome team is happy to announce the arrival of Chrome 11.0.696.57 to the Stable Channel for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame. Chrome 11 contains some really great improvements including speech input through HTML.\nRead More at Google Chrome Release Blog.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"Google Chrome Stable 11 is released!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-27T13:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/27/avira-receives-av-test-org-certificate/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: Great news – our Avira Premium Security Suite received the next AV-Test.org certificate, this time for the first quarter of 2011! So far the suite thus achieved all available AV-Test.org certificates since the beginning of the certification process. The certificate approves the tested products a good quality in detection, repair and usability.\nThis means that users of the Avira Premium Security Suite can be assured to be well protected from the threats they face when using their computers on the Internet!\n","tags":["Avira","awards","certified","News"],"title":"Avira receives AV-Test.org certificate"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-24T11:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/24/survey-reveals-mac-and-pc-people-think-differently/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" TUAW: According to the results of a massive survey by Hunch.com, Mac people are frequently young, vegetarian city-dwellers who like modern art, liberal politics, and independent films. Meanwhile, Windows supporters tend to be older, more conservative, and more likely to compare talking about computers to “struggling with a foreign language.”\nWhether you’re collecting evidence for the Mac vs. Windows debate you have planned for the weekend or preparing for an appearance on Family Feud, Hunch’s results offer some fun and fascinating insights into the tastes and habits of Mac and PC users, from what TV shows they watch to what snacks will best satisfy their afternoon munchies.\n","tags":["Mac OS X","Mac vs PC","PC","report","survey"],"title":"Survey reveals Mac and PC people think differently"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-20T17:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/20/vulnerabilities-in-microsoft-office-and-openoffice-compared/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Since 2003, the number of exploitable vulnerabilities has fallen considerably in Microsoft’s Office suite.\nH-Online: Independently of each other, security specialists Dan Kaminsky and Will Dormann from Carnegie Mellon University’s CERT have found that, in the past few years, the number of flaws and exploitable vulnerabilities in individual versions of Microsoft Office has fallen dramatically, achieving results that are even below those ofOpenOffice. However, their findings should be treated with caution, as they are based on automatic evaluations and say little about the actual threat potential.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Microsoft Office","OpenOffice","review","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and OpenOffice compared"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-20T12:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/20/yet-another-vb100-award-for-avira/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: The series continues – Avira AntiVir Personal and Avira AntiVir Professional received the April 2011 VB100 award! The tests were executed in a Windows XP SP3 environment by the Virus Bulletin test engineers.\nThe Avira anti malware solutions performed very well: All WildList samples were detected, all of the polymorphic viruses too. Also, more than 99 percent of the Worms and Bots were blocked. The heuristics test also looks very good: With 96 percent of the yet unknown malware samples filtered out Avira ranks among the best solutions!\n","tags":["Announcement","Avira","awards","News"],"title":"Yet another VB100 award for Avira!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-15T22:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/15/adobe-flash-player-10-2-159-1-is-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe Flash Player 10.2.159.1 is now available!\nDownload it from here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Updates"],"title":"Adobe Flash Player 10.2.159.1 is now available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-15T17:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/15/latest-powerpoint-security-patch-has-problems/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" On its recent patch day, Microsoft released security updates to fix vulnerabilities in multiple versions of its Office products. The patch for PowerPoint 2003 can, however, have negative consequences – after installation existing presentations may be unable to be opened or may cause an error message stating that the file is corrupted and cannot be fully displayed. In the latter case, the content of the presentation can only be partially read and any non-displayed elements, in particular background images, are lost for good after saving.\n","tags":["Microsoft","PowerPoint","problems","Updates"],"title":"Latest PowerPoint security patch has problems"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-15T10:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/15/the-update-wave-is-rolling-apple-adobe-google/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira TechBlog: Today some updates need attention – they fix critical security issues and should be installed immediately!\nThe update reign starts off with Apple. Critical security vulnerabilities are closed within the Safari web browser 5.0.5 – they allowed cyber criminals to smuggle in malware. For Mac users, additionally a security update is available for the Snow Leopard operating system. It fixes an issue with stolen certificates which arose a three weeks ago at Comodo and is amazingly tiny for an Apple security update, only 4 MByte. And then for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users the update to iOS 4.3.2 is available which basically closes the same security holes for the mobile devices as well.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","flash player","Google","Google Chrome","iOS","Security","Updates"],"title":"The Update Wave is rolling: Apple, Adobe, Google"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-14T08:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/14/facebook-password-changed-malware-attack-poses-as-message-from-facebook-support/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Sophos Labs: Repeat after me: It’s “Facebook”, not “FaceBook”.\nLearn that lesson and it can be one of the tricks you can use to protect yourself against a spammed-out malware campaign, which tries to trick you into believing that Facebook support has changed your password.\nComputer users are receiving emails claiming that the popular social network has automatically changed their password to secure their account.\nHere’s a typical message:\n","tags":["Facebook","Malware","Password","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Facebook password changed? Malware attack poses as message from Facebook support"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-14T07:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/14/adobe-plans-flash-player-update-tomorrow/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: This is good news – for the recently acknowledged zero-day security vulnerability within Adobe Flash Player, Acrobat and Reader there will be a first update available tomorrow. Adobe updated their security advisory on that matter to reflect the update schedule – the Flash player update fixing the vulnerability for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris will be available tomorrow, Friday, April 15.\nFor the also vulnerable Adobe Reader and Acrobat, updates are planned “no later than the week of April 25, 2011″. The only exception is Adobe Reader X for Windows which will be updated on the regular planned Patchday on June 14, as the integrated sandbox prevents successful exploitation there according to Adobe.\n","tags":["Adobe","flash player","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe plans Flash Player Update tomorrow"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-14T07:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/14/wordpress-com-suffers-hacker-attack-how-to-change-your-password/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Sophos Labs: Millions of blog owners around the world are being advised to consider their password security, after WordPress.com was hacked.\nTo its credit, Automattic – the company behind the WordPress.com blogging platform – didn’t mince its words or try to apply any spin to the incident, explaining it had suffered a “low-level (root) break-in to several of [its] servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.”\n","tags":["advice","manual","Password","report","WordPress","Security"],"title":"WordPress.com suffers hacker attack – how to change your password"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T23:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/follow-up-hacker-gains-access-to-wordpress-com-servers-site-source-code-exposed/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Follow up from: Hacker Gains Access To WordPress.com Servers\nTech Crunch: WordPress.com has revealed that someone has gained root-access (“low-level,” as in deep) to several of its servers this morning and that VIP customers’ source code was accessible. WordPress.com VIP customers are all on “code red” and in the process of changing all the passwords/API keys they’ve left in the source code.\n“Tough note to communicate today: Automattic had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.\n","tags":["attack","hack","News","report","Security","WordPress"],"title":"Follow up: Hacker Gains Access To WordPress.com Servers, Site Source Code Exposed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T17:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/hacker-gains-access-to-wordpress-com-servers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Tech Crunch: WordPress.com has revealed that someone has gained access to several of the their servers this morning and that VIP customers’ source code was accessible. WordPress.com customers are all on ‘code red’ and in the process of changing all the passwords/api keys they’ve left in the source code.\n“Tough note to communicate today: Automattic had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed.\n","tags":["attack","hack","report","WordPress","Security"],"title":"Hacker Gains Access To WordPress.com Servers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T12:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/microsoft-launches-first-internet-explorer-10-preview/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Fulfilling the hints Microsoft dropped back in March, the Redmond software company unveiled the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 at MIX 11 in Las Vegas on Tuesday.\nThis first preview of Internet Explorer 10 builds on the big HTML5 push that began with IE9, and adds support for more advanced Web standards, such as CSS3 Gradients as background images, and CSS3 Flexible Box and multi-column layout.\nMicrosoft said code refreshes will take place approximately every twelve weeks for IE10.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"Microsoft launches first Internet Explorer 10 preview"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T12:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/google-says-it-did-not-lie-about-government-certification-for-apps/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews: Google found itself fending off criticisms from competitor Microsoft on Monday over whether or not its Google Apps product truly had an important government security clearance. Called the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) standard, the Mountain View, Calif. company claimed on its webpage that the Government version of Apps had it. It didn’t.\nInstead, Google Apps Premier had the proper certification, while the more restrictive Government version was still in the process of getting FISMA certified. This is required by some government agencies in order to participate and win bids for any IT contract.\n","tags":["Google","News","report"],"title":"Google says it did not lie about government certification for Apps"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T12:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/ubuntu-desktop-8-04-lts-approaches-end-of-life/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: In a post on the project’s security announce mailing list, Ubuntu Release Manager Kate Stewart has reminded users that the desktop version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, code named Hardy Heron, will reach its end of life in May. Version 8.04 of the Debian-derived Linux distribution was released on 24 April 2008.\nBased on the 2.6.24 Linux kernel, it placed a stronger focus on stability and ease of use, rather than on new features, and included the GNOME 2.22 desktop environment, as well as a new installer that allowed Ubuntu to be installed directly under Windows without having to boot from CD or re-partition the hard disk. Built-in applications included version 2.4 of the OpenOffice.org office suite, Firefox 3.0 Beta 5, the F-Spot photo manager and the GIMP image editor. After 12 May 2011, no new updates, including security updates and critical fixes, will be available. The server edition of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS will continue to be supported until May 2013.\n","tags":["advice","Discontinue","News","Ubuntu","Updates"],"title":"Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 LTS approaches end of life"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T11:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/microsofts-record-patch-tuesday/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: It’s a record for Microsoft: 9 critical and 8 important updates close a total of 64 security holes. In the worst case, a number of the vulnerabilities allow for remote code execution; in other words, arbitrary code can be injected and executed, such as from specially crafted documents and websites. Microsoft put 44 of them in the category Exploitability Index 1, meaning that the code that exploits the flaw will probably go into circulation soon.\n","tags":["Microsoft Office","News","Security","Updates","Windows"],"title":"Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T11:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/chromium-based-flock-social-web-browser-is-no-more/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: In a post on their home page, the Flock developers have announced that support for their Chromium-based social web browser will officially be discontinued on 26 April 2011. Thanking their “loyal users” for their support, the developers encourage the Flock community to migrate to another browser.\nFlock began life as a cross-platform browser start-up in April 2005. Distinguishing itself from other browsers, Flock automatically managed updates and media from several popular social services, including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Digg, YouTube and Twitter.\n","tags":["advice","Browsers","Flock","report"],"title":"Chromium-based Flock social web browser is no more"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-13T11:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/13/my-naked-pic-is-attached-malware-spammed-out/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Are you in the habit of having complete strangers email you naked pictures of themselves?\nThat’s the only reason I can think of that you can legitimately explain why your computer has been infected by the latest malware attack that has been spammed out around the world.\nUsers are seeing messages in their inbox, which attempt to trick recipients into opening the attached file with the promise of a nude photo.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","review","spam","Security"],"title":"My naked pic is attached – malware spammed out"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-12T10:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/12/first-firefox-4-update-coming-on-april-26/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla Links: Mozilla has announced that it will release the first update for Firefox 4 on April 26, about a month after the original release, back in March 22.\nNew with this release is that Mozilla will start using code names (somehow related to the main branch codename, in this case Tumucumaque) for udpates as well, as a way to help developers that follow Firefox development closely, more clearly understand what is coming when.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Mozilla","Updates"],"title":"First Firefox 4 update coming on April 26"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-12T09:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/12/a-new-security-flaw-hits-vlc/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" H-Online: Following on from last week’s S3M vulnerability in the VLC media player, a new advisory warns of a buffer overflow when playing MP4/MPEG-4 files.The bug, reported by Aliz Hammond, requires that a user open a specially crafted MP4 file. According to Secunia, the vulnerability is found in the MP4_ReadBox_skcr()function in the demultiplexer and is rated as “highly critical”. All versions from 1.0.0 to 1.1.8 are affected by the problem.\n","tags":["Security","VLC","Vulnerability"],"title":"A new security flaw hits VLC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-12T08:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/12/bbc-newsdad-walks-in-on-daughter-facebook-scams/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs: Criminals and scammers on Facebook aren’t resting on their laurels… in fact, they are branching out and using multiple techniques all rolled into one scam.\nTonight’s blockbuster spam is taking on several guises. One version is a likejacking attack that spams your wall with the message “Dad walks in on daughter… EMBARRASING!!!” and “This really has to be an awkward moment.”\nThey seem to be quickly rotating through a long list of Google (goo.gl) short URLs to evade detection.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","Malware","scam","Security"],"title":"BBC News/Dad walks in on daughter Facebook scams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-12T08:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/12/zero-day-vulnerability-in-adobe-flash-player-reader-and-acrobat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: Adobe released a security advisory in which it warns from a zero-day vulnerability within current version of Adobe Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat. Affected are Flash Player 10.2.153.1 and earlier versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris, the current version integrated in the Chrome web browser, and 10.2.156.12 and earlier versions for Android. The authplay.dll component of current and older version of Adobe Acrobat and Reader are also affected; according to Adobe, the sandbox of Acrobat Reader X prevents from execution of malicious payloads though.\n","tags":["0-Day","Adobe","PDF","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Zero-Day Vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-11T18:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/11/twitter-spam-and-viagra-galore/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Spam mails claiming to be from Twitter that send you to pharmacy sites are a popular wheeze for spammers, and here we go again.\nIt seems I have “two PR messages from Twitter”. If that wasn’t enough to get me clicking (it isn’t), I can also join in on sports conversations, argue with bloggers and tell the World when I stumble into some form of natural disaster.\nHammering one of the many links will actually take me to 219(dot)84(dot)119(dot)56/afternoon(dot)html, which will send me to pharmacydrugstorehealthprofessionals(dot)net.\n","tags":["Social Media","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter spam and viagra galore"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-11T18:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/11/fake-certificate-in-malware-with-message/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira TechBlog: The malware authors every now and then send us virus researchers some messages. For example in the compiled binary itself, or as debug output. Now we found a Zbot Trojan variant which tries to evade detection by carrying a digital certificate and therewith looking more legitimate. And this certificate is registered to “DetectMe! 🙂 ”, also adding random data behind the certificate.\nWe see hints like these regularly – malware authors proposing names for their malicious creations or suggesting a place where a signature based detection would be suitable. Of course, such hints are ignored by us for detection but make us smile for a short time.\n","tags":["certified","Interesting","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Fake Certificate in Malware – with Message"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-11T18:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/11/zeroaccess-an-advanced-kernel-mode-rootkit/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Prevx Blog: In the last couple years there have been three major players who dominated the scene in the field of the kernel mode rootkit development. They are Rustock rootkit – with its latest build discovered in the wild in 2008 – MBR rootkit – firstly discovered in January 2007 – and TDL rootkit, which can be considered the most advanced kernel mode rootkit to date, able to infect both x86 and x64 versions of Windows operating system.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"ZeroAccess, an advanced kernel mode rootkit"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-04T20:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/04/my-facebook-wall-has-been-viewed-x-times-viral-survey-scam-spreads-rapidly/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"SophosLabs wrote: Do you want to know the total number of times that your Facebook wall has been viewed? Are you curious as to who may be stalking you on Facebook?\nIf so, you’re a prime candidate for scammers who are exploiting that desire to put money into their own pockets.\nHere are the latest messages spreading virally between thousands of Facebook users who have fallen for the scam:\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","scam","Social Media","spam","warning","Security"],"title":"My Facebook wall has been viewed X times – viral survey scam spreads rapidly"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-02T08:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/02/comodo-group-issues-bogus-ssl-certificates/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"from Schneier on Security by Schneier:\nThis isn’t good:\nThe hacker, whose March 15 attack was traced to an IP address in Iran, compromised a partner account at the respected certificate authority Comodo Group, which he used to request eight SSL certificates for six domains: mail.google.com, www.google.com, login.yahoo.com, login.skype.com, addons.mozilla.org and login.live.com.\nThe certificates would have allowed the attacker to craft fake pages that would have been accepted by browsers as the legitimate websites. The certificates would have been most useful as part of an attack that redirected traffic intended for Skype, Google and Yahoo to a machine under the attacker’s control. Such an attack can range from small-scale Wi-Fi spoofing at a coffee shop all the way to global hijacking of internet routes.\n","tags":["report","review","Security"],"title":"Comodo Group Issues Bogus SSL Certificates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-01T22:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/01/massive-sql-injection-attack-making-the-rounds-694k-urls-so-far/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Thanks to my friend, Pondus!\nArs Technica: Hundreds of thousands of URLs have been compromised—at the time of writing, 694,000 (it’s over millions of site when you are reading this)—in an enormous and indiscriminate SQL injection attack. The attack has modified text stored in databases, with the result that pages served up by the attacked systems include within each page one or more references to a particular JavaScript file.\n","tags":["attack","hack","News","report","review","Security","SQL"],"title":"Massive SQL injection attack making the rounds—694K URLs so far"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-01T16:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/01/chrome-bookmarks-integrate-with-google-search/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System: Until recently, Google Bookmarks and Chrome Bookmarks were two separate features that didn’t speak the same language. Even if you could save your Chrome bookmarks to a Google account, they weren’t saved to Google Bookmarks. For some reason, your bookmarks are available in a special Google Docs folder.\nChrome bookmarks have a web interface, but it’s likely that the obvious will happen: Chrome bookmarks could be saved to Google Bookmarks. Jérôme Flipo noticed that the Google Bookmarks OneBox already includes Chrome bookmarks. I’ve tried to find SmallNetBuilder.com and Google’s OneBox returned it even if it was starred in Chrome, not in Google Bookmarks.\n","tags":["Bookmarks","Google","Google Chrome"],"title":"Chrome Bookmarks Integrate with Google Search"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-04-01T16:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/04/01/google-1/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System: Google +1 is yet another attempt to make Google more social. It’s Google’s version of the Facebook “likes”, a simple feature that’s very powerful because it’s part of a social network.\nGoogle will show +1 buttons next to all search results and ads, while encouraging other sites to include the buttons. All +1’s are public and they’re tied to Google Profiles. The goal is to use this data to personalize search results and ads by recommending sites +1’d by your friends. Google Social Search already does this, but there’s no support for Facebook likes, so Google had to come up with a substitute.\n","tags":["Google","Social Media"],"title":"Google +1"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-30T21:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/30/google-talk-guru/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Talk Guru is a new Google bot that lets you ask simple questions. It’s “an experimental service that allows people to get information like sports results, weather forecasts, definitions etc via chat. It works on many popular chat applications that support Google Talk.”\nSend an invitation to **guru**@googlelabs.com in Gmail Chat, Google Talk or any other Jabber client and find simple facts like “weather in London”, “amplitude definition”, “translate souris”, “2^8”, “web stanford” (which returns the top Google result for [stanford]).\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","News"],"title":"Google Talk Guru"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-30T14:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/30/analysis-of-trspy-spyeye/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: SpyEye is a malware family which we are monitoring for some time. Today we are analyzing a sample which is detected as TR/Spy.SpyEye.flh by Avira.\nThe Trojan is able to inject code in running processes and can perform the following functions:\nCapture network traffic Send and receive network packets in order to bypass application firewalls Hide and prevent access to the startup registry entry Hide and prevent access to the binary code Hide the own process on injected processes Steal information from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox A detailed analysis of this malware by Liviu Serban, Virus Researcher at Avira.\n","tags":["analyze","Avira","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Analysis of TR/Spy.SpyEye"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-25T21:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/25/security-vulnerabilities-in-chrome/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: It looks like new Chrome releases aren’t due every six weeks as Google announced a few weeks ago, but once a week now – the company just released Chrome 10.0.648.204 and fixes 6 highly critical security vulnerabilities with it. Those security vulnerabilities allow attackers to smuggle in malware like Trojans without the user noticing.\nThat is why the automatic update mechanism is so important: When clicking on the tool symbol and choosing the “About Google Chrome” menu entry, the version check should show that Chrome is already on the current release – or offer to download and install the update in case that didn’t happen yet.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Security","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Security Vulnerabilities in Chrome"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-24T11:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/24/google-yahoo-skype-targeted-in-attack-linked-to-iran/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Cnet: A malicious attacker that appears to be the Iranian government managed to obtain supposedly secure digital certificates that can be used to impersonate Google, Yahoo, Skype, and other major Web sites, the security company affected by the breach said today.\nComodo, a Jersey City, N.J.-based firm that issues digital certificates, said the nine certificates were fraudulently obtained, including one for Microsoft’s Live.com, have already been revoked. A fraudulent certificate allows someone to impersonate the secure versions of those Web sites–the ones that are used when encrypted connections are enabled–in some circumstances.\n","tags":["advice","alert","attack","hack","warning","Security"],"title":"Google, Yahoo, Skype targeted in attack linked to Iran"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-23T09:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/23/talking-to-your-computer-with-html5/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google Chrome Blog: Today, we’re updating the Chrome beta channel with a couple of new capabilities, especially for web developers. Fresh from the work that we’ve been doing with the HTML Speech Incubator Group, we’ve added support for theHTML5 speech input API. With this API, developers can give web apps the ability to transcribe your voice to text. When a web page uses this feature, you simply click on an icon and then speak into your computer’s microphone. The recorded audio is sent to speech servers for transcription, after which the text is typed out for you. Try it out yourself in this little demo. Today’s beta release also offers a sneak peek of GPU-accelerated 3D CSS, which allows developers to apply slick 3D effects to web page content using CSS.\n","tags":["API","Google","Google Chrome","HTML5"],"title":"Talking to your computer (with HTML5!)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-23T09:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/23/switch-to-gmail/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Gmail Blog: Posted by Jason Toff, Product Marketing Manager\nSwitching email accounts can be painful. The idea of losing years of accumulated contacts and messages can sound daunting, to say the least. Luckily, switching to Gmail doesn’t mean you have to start totally fresh.\nBack in 2009 we announced tools that let you import mail and contacts from other providers, such as AOL or Hotmail. Today we’re announcing the addition of fourteen more international domains to our list of supported email providers:\n","tags":["Gmail","Google"],"title":"Switch to Gmail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-23T08:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/23/data-loss-at-play-com/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Play.com, one of the largest online retailers of DVDs, CDs, MP3s, books and gadgets, emailed its customers yesterday admitting to a security breach in its marketing communications. Names and emails may have been compromised.\nPlay.com claims the breach happened outside its walls, so presumably they use a third party marketing consultancy to manage part or all of its marketing activities.\nHere is one of the messages that was sent out to customers by Play.com:\n","tags":["advice","hack","Password","report","Security"],"title":"Data loss at Play.com"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-23T08:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/23/firefox-extension-used-in-facebook-scam/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: Not only Facebook is adding new and interesting features to its toolbox; spammers and scammers in Facebook are, too. Currently there is a scam making rounds using a classic “who is viewing your profile” themed bait.\nSo far – nothing new. After the user grants the application the requested privileges, which of course will send out the above mentioned spam posts to all his or her friends, the user gets redirected to a download instruction site. There he or she is asked to download the Firefox browser and then install a popular Firefox extension which allegedly gets downloaded over 27,000 times per week. This simple tweak should generate a new menu entry in Facebook which would then show user statistics.\n","tags":["Browsers","Facebook","Phishing","Firefox","Firefox Addon","Mozilla","scam","Security"],"title":"Firefox Extension Used in Facebook Scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-22T08:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/22/many-updates-flash-player-mac-os-x-firefox/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira TechBlog: Today is a busy day for those who want to keep their computers secure: Many updates are available, from Adobes Flash Player over Apples Mac OS X operating system to the Firefox web browser.\nThere is a security vulnerability in Flash player which became public as a zero day vulnerability a week ago. It has been attacked in a limited fashion. Now Adobe released this security update which users can download from the website of the company. As this security vulnerability already gets actively exploited, users and administrators should apply the update immediately.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Browsers","Firefox","Flash","flash player","Mac OS X","Mozilla","Security","Updates"],"title":"Many Updates: Flash Player, Mac OS X, Firefox"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-21T20:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/21/firefox-4-0-final-is-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Over the past week or two, we have been keeping track of the various releases of Firefox 4 including RC1 and RC2, counting down to the official release tomorrow, the 22nd of March. Though it is officially being released tomorrow, it has been made available for download today at the Mozilla FTP servers.\nThis is the third release of a browser version after Chrome 10 stable and Internet Explorer 9 RTM in recent weeks.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Mozilla","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 4.0 final is released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-20T15:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/20/installing-an-application-using-internet-explorer-9/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System Blog: I tried to download the latest Chromium build using Internet Explorer 9 and it was one of the most painful downloading experiences. Microsoft tries to protect users from downloading malware and uses a feature called SmartScreen Filter that “checks software downloads against a dynamically updated list of reported malicious software sites”. This feature was available in IE8, but the latest version of IE tried to improve it by analyzing application reputation.\n","tags":["compare","Google","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","review"],"title":"Installing an Application Using Internet Explorer 9"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-03-19T20:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/19/i-want-to-share-this-with-you/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey, It’s been my birthday last Thursday🥳\nNow 23 Years old (I know I know, I’m getting old…😉 )\nSo here I want to share my birthday cake with you!\nAlso here I want to Thank all my friends who sent so lovely and kind birthday wishes to me.\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"I want to share this with you!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-17T23:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/17/wd-introduces-6tb-external-hdd-for-hd-content-creation/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" IRVINE, Calif., March 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its My Book® Studio Edition™ II dual-drive storage system with a massive 6 terabytes (TB) of storage to meet the capacity needs of today’s creative pros and Mac® enthusiasts who create, store, edit and archive large HD video and photo files. The new capacity provides users 33 percent more storage than the previous capacity, while maintaining the same footprint.\n","tags":["hard drive","Hardware","WD"],"title":"WD Introduces 6TB External HDD for HD Content Creation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-17T23:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/17/porn-industry-could-get-a-xxx-domain-this-week/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: The porn industry is rumored to win a major battle this week with the possible approval of the .xxx domain.\nThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which doles out the .com, .net and .biz suffixes for website URLs, could approve the domain name on Friday, according to Politico. The report goes on to say that such domains would be available for purchase this summer.\n","tags":["Domain","Domain Names","internet","report","Sex"],"title":"Porn Industry Could Get a “.xxx” Domain This Week"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-17T22:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/17/a-technical-analysis-on-the-cve-2011-0609-adobe-flash-player-vulnerability/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft Malware Protection Center: On March 14, Adobe released a security advisory (APSA11-01) warning of 0-day attacks affecting Adobe Flash Player (versions earlier than and including 10.2.152.33). These attacks were hidden inside Microsoft Excel documents that were used as a vehicle to deliver the exploit.\nThe Adobe Flash file embedded inside the Excel file is another carrier for the exploit. It loads shellcode inside memory, performs heap-spraying, and loads a Flash byte stream from memory to exploit the 0-day vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2011-0609.\n","tags":["Adobe","analyze","flash player","review","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"A Technical Analysis on the CVE-2011-0609 Adobe Flash Player Vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-17T22:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/17/twitter-goes-secure-say-goodbye-to-firesheep-with-always-use-https-option/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Sophos Labs: Good news on the social networking security front is that Twitter has finally got its act together to offer an Always use HTTPS option.\nIf you turn on this option, all of your personalized interaction with Twitter will be encrypted – not only while you are logging in, but also while you are posting tweets.\nA lot of people fail to recognize the value of using HTTPS on Twitter. As long as your username and password are sent over HTTPS, so no-one can sniff them out of the ether, who cares if your tweets go over plain HTTP? After all, a tweet is meant to be public.\n","tags":["Security","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter goes secure – say goodbye to Firesheep with \"Always use HTTPS\" option"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-17T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/17/vanessa-hudgens-meets-fbi-to-discuss-nude-photo-hack/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Nude photos and videos of Vanessa Hudgens, the star of “High School Musical”, have surfaced on the net, with speculation rife that they have been released by a hacker who broke into the 22-year-old’s Gmail account.\nSo far, so normal for saucy celebrity news.\nBut what’s different on this occasion is that not only has Vanessa Hudgens reported to have met law enforcement officers to discuss the crime, but as many as 50 other celebrities are said to have been targeted by a hacking gang dead set on stealing compromising snaps and information.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","leak","Security"],"title":"Vanessa Hudgens meets FBI to discuss nude photo hack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-17T00:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/17/new-chrome-logo/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The latest Chrome Dev Channel release comes with a new Chrome logo that’s more plain and boring, but looks better as a desktop icon. Even if not many people will switch to a different browser just because they don’t like the new logo, Chrome lost some of its magic by switching to a visual identity that’s no longer vibrant and picturesque. Here’s the new Chrome icon:\n… and the old Chrome icon:\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"New Chrome Logo"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-16T17:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/16/google-docs-gets-a-real-time-upgrade/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" In a bid to make Google Docs more appealing to workers and consumers, Google is rolling out a new feature that lets users of its productivity service discuss shared documents in real-time. The upgrade is aimed at helping users resolve issues faster.\nThe new discussion feature is also part of Google’s ongoing effort to dethrone Microsoft Office as the leader in productivity apps. By enabling more real-time discussions, Google is building off the strength of its cloud-based approach to apps and recognizes the way users increasingly are accustomed to communicating online.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google Docs Gets a Real-Time Upgrade"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T12:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/google-toolbar-8-powered-by-google-chrome/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System: After Google released Chrome, Google Toolbar’s development slowed down. That’s because Google Toolbar is no longer the primary vehicle for adding browser features and Google mostly focused on improving Chrome.\nGoogle Toolbar 8 is a completely new version of Google’s add-on that was available as part of Google Labs. “Google Toolbar 8 is actually built and runs on top of the Google Chrome Frame platform. This means that Toolbar 8 will run more like a web app in that it can be customized and updated much more frequently and easily. It also means that Google Chrome Frame is installed at the time of Toolbar 8 installation,” explains Google.\n","tags":["Google Chrome","Google Toolbar","Updates"],"title":"Google Toolbar 8, Powered by Google Chrome"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T12:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/webm-plugin-for-internet-explorer-9/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System: Internet Explorer 9 will be released later today and one of the many new features is the native support for videos. Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft decided to only support H.264 videos by default, so you can’t watch WebM videos without installing additional software.\nTo solve this problem, Google developed a WebM plugin for IE9. “They said elephants couldn’t ride flying dolphins. They said that one of the world’s most popular browsers couldn’t play WebM video in HTML5. They were wrong,” mentions Google half-jokingly.\n","tags":["Google","Internet Explorer","suggestion","WebM"],"title":"WebM Plugin for Internet Explorer 9"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T10:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/internet-explorer-9-is-out-includes-new-security-features/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"isc.sans.edu: Microsoft released version 9 of its Internet Explorer web browser. You can download IE 9 from windows.microsoft.com.\nMicrosoft also set up a domain dedicated to the new browser: www.beautyoftheweb.com. Unfortunately, that site isn’t hosted under the microsoft.com domain, nor does it have an SSL certificate to confirm that it belongs to Microsoft. Using this site to distribute the browser goes against the advice of downloading software only from known vendor websites. Copycat malicious sites claiming to distribute IE 9 will probably appear shortly, if they aren’t around yet.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"Internet Explorer 9 is out, includes new security features"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T10:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/twitter-using-gamification-to-increase-followers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I just read an interesting post in ThinkVitamin.com and wanted to share with you:\nI just signed up for a new Twitter account and as I was going through the on-boarding process, I noticed Twitter has introduced a bit of Gamification to encourage you to follow more people.\nThey use a simple progress-bar metaphor to encourage you to follow 10 people. I like it.\n","tags":["News","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter using Gamification to increase followers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T10:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/pinguy-os-11-04-pre-alpha-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Pinguy OS an out-of-the-box working operating system for everyone, not just geeks.This OS is for people that have never used Linux before or for people that just want an out-of-the-box working OS without doing all the tweaks and enhancements that everyone seems to do when installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu or other Linux based Distro’s.\nRead Full Story here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/pinguy-os-11-04-pre-alpha.html\n","tags":["Download","Linux","Updates"],"title":"Pinguy OS 11.04 Pre-Alpha Released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T09:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/gmailers-skinnier-and-smartier-than-yahoo-users/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A new study shows that Gmail users are more likely to be young, thin, career-minded men, while Yahoo! is more typically home to overweight, older women Web curator Hunch.com asked its 700,000 users which email service they use, as well as a series of questions about their lifestyles. With 75 million answers to work with, the site was able to discover some striking differences between users of Gmail, and those who have stuck with older web clients like Yahoo!, Hotmail, and AOL. For instance, Gmail users are more likely to be young, Yahoo! users are often extroverted, and AOL users have typically been in a relationship for more than ten years. Here are four other takeaways from the study:\n","tags":["Interesting","Email","survey"],"title":"Gmailers: Skinnier and smartier than Yahoo! users?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-15T09:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/15/critical-adobe-flaw-without-patch/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: A vulnerability within the current versions of Adobe Flash Player on all supported platforms has been found, warns the company. Affected are not only the Flash Player installations, but also Adobe Reader and Acrobat via the “authplay.dll” Flash Player integration. Currently there is no mitigation which will help against the exploitation – so only opening expected documents from trusted sources for the time being is a good advice.\n","tags":["Adobe","Vulnerability"],"title":"Critical Adobe Flaw without Patch"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-14T14:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/14/chat-with-your-facebook-friends-on-yahoo-mail-beta/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Yahoo Mail Blog wrote:\nGreetings, Yahoo! Mail Beta users!\nSome exciting updates to Yahoo! Mail Beta that we’re in the middle of rolling out:\n“Hello, my name is Stephanie and I’m a Facebook addict.”\nTo all you fellow Facebook addicts out there, you might already know that we provide Facebook integration in our downloadable Messenger client. Now you can chat with your Facebook friends in Yahoo! Mail too! On the left, you’ll see “Facebook Friends” under “Online Contacts”. If you click on the thunderbolt, you will be prompted to authenticate on Facebook Connect (if you haven’t already). Once you’ve authenticated, your online Facebook friends will appear below “Online Contacts” and you can chat freely. As if Facebook was not addictive enough on its own, right? 😉\n","tags":["Facebook","Messenger","Yahoo"],"title":"Chat with your Facebook friends on Yahoo! Mail Beta"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-14T14:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/14/spammers-exploit-japans-catastrophic-state/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec: Only a few days ago, Japan experienced one of the worst earthquakes in its history. The earthquake registered 8.9 on the Richter scale and triggered an enormous tsunami. The heart-wrenching images on television have left the world shaken. It was the worst earthquake and tsunami in the past century and at least 50 countries have since received related tsunami warnings.\nAs the death and injury tolls continue to rise, one must not forget those who awake to exploit such delicate situations—spammers continue to maintain the guise of charitable institutions and governmental organizations! Don’t be surprised to suddenly see an email message in your inbox marked as URGENT and pleading with you for “monitory help” [sic] or a phishing mail urging you to donate to the rehabilitation of those affected by the quake and tsunami. Use prudence in finding out the genuine intent of email senders before you reach out or respond.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","spam","warning","Security"],"title":"Spammers Exploit Japan’s Catastrophic State"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-14T13:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/14/pwn2own-apple-v-google-v-microsoft-v-mozilla-v-blackberry/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Sophos Labs Blog: If you’re interested in computer security, you’ve probably heard of PWN2OWN. It’s a competition which has become an annual fixture at the annual CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.\nThe competition gets its name because, as the CanSecWest organizers explain, “If you can execute arbitrary code (PWN) on these [laptops or mobile phones] through a previously undisclosed browser (Firefox, IE, Safari) exploit, you can go home with one (OWN).”\n","tags":["Apple","BlackBerry","Browsers","Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Mozilla","Pwn2Own","Safari","Security"],"title":"PWN2OWN – Apple v. Google v. Microsoft v. Mozilla v. BlackBerry!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-14T12:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/14/more-browser-updates/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: Well, actually we expect some more updates as some security vulnerabilities have been revealed at the Pwn2Own contest during the CanSecWest security conference. Google is the first and pushes out version 10.0.648.133 – which fixes one security vulnerability within WebKit (the base of the Blackberry, Chrome and Safari webbrowsers). As usual, the update is spread via the built-in automatic update mechanism. Users can make sure to use the latest version by clicking on the tool symbol and choosing the “About Chrome” menu entry.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Security","Updates"],"title":"More Browser Updates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-13T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/13/google-to-launch-major-new-social-network-called-circles-possibly-today/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Today I’ve read a nice article in readwriteweb.com so I wanted share it with you:\nWe believe that Google will preview a major new social service called Google Circles at South by Southwest Interactive today. Update: Google has now officially denied that Circles will launch here, but not that it exists. Others, including Tim O’Reilly, have also now confirmed that they’ve seen it and that it’s awesome. If what we’ve heard is correct, the service will offer photo, video and status message sharing. Everything users share on Circles will be shared only with the most appropriate circle of social contacts in their lives, not with all your contacts in bulk. Circles may be shown off at an event co-hosted tonight by the ACLU, an organization focused on privacy and the liberties it affords. It may not be a big public launch yet, but it’s clear that this is a major product in the works at the very least.\n","tags":["Google","Google Circles","News","Social Media"],"title":"Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-13T14:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/13/facebook-and-the-white-house-join-forces-in-the-fight-against-bullying/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Examiner.com wrote: As many people are aware, bullying today is not like it used to be. Back in the day, all one had to do to turn his bully in was give the name of the person who bothered him to a trusted adult. Today, it is not that easy. Bullying doesn’t end at the school bell. It follows students from the blacktop to their cell phones to their computer screens. Many times, these “cyber bullies” create fake online profiles which allow them to bully anonymously. Kids in turn learn to fear school instead of perceiving it as a place of safety. Consider these staggering statistics- One third of middle school and high school students report being bullied during the school year. Almost 3 million students have said they were pushed, shoved, tripped and even spit on. Those are only the reported incidents of bullying. It does not include the day to day bullying that goes unreported. Bullying has also shown to lead to absences and poor performance in the classroom.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","The White House"],"title":"Facebook and The White House join forces in the fight against bullying"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-13T14:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/13/unconfirmed-reports-that-yahoo-has-sold-delicious-for-5-million/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" TheNextWeb wrote: We’ve received a solid report from a reliable and proven source that Yahoo has sold social bookmarking site Delicious for $5m+.\nThe service was placed on the market in December after a meeting to discuss Yahoo’s future direction. After a heated bidding process, the site has reportedly been sold to a rival bookmarking service – who exactly we’re unsure of but we’ll update once we have confirmation. We do know its been sold to an existing competitor with “strong user base.”\n","tags":["business","Delicious","News","report","rumor","Yahoo"],"title":"Unconfirmed reports that Yahoo has sold Delicious for $5 Million"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-13T14:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/13/twitter-to-developers-enough-with-the-third-party-apps/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Twitter has issued a statement to its mailing list encouraging third-party developers to cease creating applications that use the Twitter API solely to duplicate the functionality offered by Twitter’s own official clients. Citing an effort to improve consistency of the Twitter user experience, the social networking behemoth is exercising more control over how its service is utilized.\nDevelopers who already have an established audience, such as those who create such popular clients as TweetDeck and Seesmic, may continue developing their applications and supporting their user bases. However, developers are encouraged to cease creating new applications that duplicate existing functionality. With 750,000 applications in existence that already use the Twitter API, it is quite clear why Twitter wants to stop the tide of new apps and grab the reins of its users’ experience: it wants to own the user experience.\n","tags":["News","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter to developers: enough with the third-party apps"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-13T07:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/13/apples-safari-browser-embarrassed-at-pwn2own-hacked-in-5-seconds/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Safari just got served. At this year’s Pwn2Own conference, security firms and enthusiasts are doing their very best to discover and deploy exploits to some of the world’s most popular browsers. Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari, they’re all on the menu for conference attendees and some have definitely faired better than others. Google issued a challenge, promising $20,000 to any person or team that could crack Chrome on the conferences opening day, but the two teams scheduled to take a swing backed down. Firefox is, for the time being, still standing, and, per usual, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was taken down without much fuss. But which browser faired the worst? That would be Apple’s Safari. A French security research firm named Vulpen managed to break into Safari running on a MacBook Air in a cool five seconds. The company noted that the Safari update issued by Apple yesterday — version 5.0.4 — fixes some of the vulnerabilities, but not all. The takedown of Safari 5.0.3 used exploits that are still available in the updated code base. Go ahead Apple detractors, have a little fun in the comments section.\n","tags":["Apple","Browsers","Pwn2Own","Safari","Security"],"title":"Apple’s Safari browser embarrassed at Pwn2Own, hacked in 5 seconds"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-12T23:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/12/internet-explorer-9-hits-rtm/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"TechSpot wrote: Microsoft this week reportedly signed off the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build of Internet Explorer 9. The RTM build is 9.00.8112.16421.110308-0330, meaning it was compiled on March 8, 2011 at 3:30 AM, according to Windows 8 Beta.\nA user by the name of sp3ciali5t has managed to post an image of the IE9 about screen for this build on Twitter. It’s in Turkish, but you can still the build number:\n","tags":["Announcement","Browsers","Internet Explorer","News"],"title":"Internet Explorer 9 hits RTM"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-12T21:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/12/chrome-12-will-drop-support-for-google-gears/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System: While most Chrome users have been upgraded to Chrome 10, Google is fixing the bugs from Chrome 11 and working on Chrome 12. A recent Chromium build made a significant change: Gears is no longer included in Google Chrome.\nGears is a browser plugin released by Google back in 2007, The initial goal was to add support for offline web apps, but the plugin added many other HTML5 features at a time when HTML5 wasn’t a priority for most browsers. Google discontinued Gears last year to focus on “bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5” and to implement them in Google Chrome. Features like geolocation, notifications, web workers, application caches are already available in Google Chrome, so it’s probably the right time to stop bundling the Gears plugin.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","News"],"title":"Chrome 12 Will Drop Support for Google Gears"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-12T20:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/12/please-donate-redcross-for-japanese-earthquake-victims/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Please text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to the RedCross for Japanese earthquake victims (US Only)\nSpread this message!\nHere is FAQ page of RedCross: http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=%2Fntld_Redcross_text2help_faqs\nIf you don’t text, or you are outside US, here is other solutions: http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main\u0026s_src=RSG000000000\u0026s_subsrc=RCO_FrontPagePanel\n","tags":["donate"],"title":"Please donate RedCross for Japanese earthquake victims"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-12T11:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/12/heres-some-good-news-for-mac-users-go-avira/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira’s Anti-Virus Technology Used by ZeoBIT in New System Utility – MacKeeper Avira provides anti-malware scanning engine to MacKeeper App\nTettnang / Silicon Valley, March 11, 2011 – IT security expert Avira announced today that it licensed its industry-leading antivirus product to Silicon Valley-based ZeoBIT to be used in ZeoBIT’s MacKeeper product. MacKeeper is an all-in-one app that includes 16+ unique features for security, cleaning, data control and optimization for Macintosh computers.\n","tags":["antivirus","Avira","Mac OS X","News","Offer","Security"],"title":"Here's some good news for Mac users! Go Avira!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-10T20:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/10/microsoft-rolls-out-new-virtualization-tools-for-desktop-optimization-pack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews wrote: Thursday, Microsoft announced two updates to its Software Assurance Desktop Optimization Pack for enterprise Windows deployments available immediately: App-V 4.6 SP1, and MED-V 2.0.\nMicrosoft Application Virtualization, or App-V, is the solution which turns software applications into centrally managed, virtualized services that don’t have to be installed on client machines. With the SP1 update, Microsoft has introduced package accelerators in the new App-V Sequencer, which Microsoft has been discussing since mid-2010. Package Accelerators are files that admins can combine with install media to automatically convert applications into virtual packages. They are released 1:1 with the applications they work with, and the first accelerators will be available in early April, and will include Project, Adobe Reader, and Office 2010.\n","tags":["Announcement","Microsoft","News"],"title":"Microsoft rolls out new virtualization tools for Desktop Optimization Pack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-09T22:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/09/a-mini-newsletter-from-your-google-chrome-security-team/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Chrome Security Team wrote: We’re always working hard to enhance the Chrome browser with bug fixes, new defenses and new features. The release of Chrome 10 is no different, and there are some items worth highlighting:\nChrome 10: Flash sandboxing\nWith Chrome 10, our first cut of the previously announced Flash sandboxing initiative is now enabled by default for the Windows platform on Vista and newer. Additionally, because we automatically update Flash to the latest and most secure version, this should provide useful defense in depth.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","review","Security"],"title":"A Mini-Newsletter From Your Google Chrome Security Team"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-08T21:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/08/whats-new-in-chrome-10/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Chrome 10 is ready for primetime and it comes with a surprising number of new features. Here are some of them:\nThe Options dialog is now a web page that opens in a new tab. Chrome has one less modal dialog and the new Options page is better suited for netbooks. Another advantage is that each section of the Options page has a permalink that can be bookmarked.\nEven if Chrome doesn’t have too many customizable settings, there’s a search box that lets you quickly find an option. Try searching for “cookies” and you’ll notice that Chrome finds settings that aren’t immediately obvious. ","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","review"],"title":"What's New in Chrome 10?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-08T20:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/08/a-new-chrome-stable-release-today-with-sync-sandboxing-speed-and-a-new-settings-menu-too/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"cross-posted on the Official Google Blog\nJust three weeks ago, we kicked off the Year of the Rabbit with a speedy Chrome beta. Today, we’re excited to bring these speed improvements and more to everyone using Chrome. With today’s stable release, even your most complex web apps will run more quickly and responsively in the browser. (For the curious, this boost corresponds to a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite.)\nWe realize that speed isn’t just about pure brawn in the browser—it’s also about saving time with simple interfaces. Chrome’s new settings interface will help you get to the right settings quickly so you don’t have to dig endlessly to find a way to import your bookmarks or change your browser’s homepage. We’ve added a search box that shows you the settings you’re looking for, as you type. On top of that, you can also copy and paste a direct link into Chrome’s address bar to jump to a specific settings page. (No more long, frustrating phone conversations with your dad on where to find that specific setting in the browser!) Here’s the new settings interface in action:\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"A new Chrome stable release today with sync, sandboxing, speed…and a new settings menu too!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-08T12:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/08/introducing-the-google-apis-explorer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google is always looking for new ways to make it easier for developers to get started with our APIs. When you come across a new Google API, you often want to try it out without investing too much time. With that in mind, we are happy to announce the Google APIs Explorer, an interactive tool that lets you easily try out Google APIs right from your browser. Today, the Explorer supports over a half dozen APIs – and we expect that number to grow rapidly over the coming weeks and months.\n","tags":["Announcement","API","Google","News"],"title":"Introducing the Google APIs Explorer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-08T12:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/08/adobe-releases-flash-to-html5-converter-codenamed-wallaby/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Monday night, Adobe released a new, experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool codenamed Wallaby.\nWallaby is an AIR app that lets devs and designers quickly and simply convert Flash Professional files to HTML5— and when we say “simply and easily,” we mean it’s a matter of dragging and dropping. The company is specifically hoping this tool will make it easier for designers and developers to get their content onto iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.\n","tags":["Adobe","Flash","HTML5","News"],"title":"Adobe Releases Flash-to-HTML5 Converter, Codenamed Wallaby"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-08T11:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/08/wordpress-hit-with-second-big-attack-in-two-days/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" CNET wrote: The popular blogging-site hoster WordPress was hit with another distributed denial-of-service attack this morning, the second in two days.\n“Unfortunately, the DDoS attack from yesterday returned in a different form this morning and affected sitewide performance,” the company said in a notice on its Automattic site, which serves as a dashboard for the service. “The good news is that we were able to mitigate it quickly and performance returned to normal around 11:15 UTC. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely.”\n","tags":["attack","News","report","review","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress hit with second big attack in two days"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-08T11:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/08/firefox-4-rc-available-for-download/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" labnol.org wrote: If you are a fan of Firefox, you may want to get this one.\nThe first RC (Release Candidate) of Firefox web browser is now available for download at ftp.mozilla.org. If you have trouble accessing the above link, use this direct link to download the Firefox 4 RC1 installer for Windows. The Mac version of Firefox 4 RC1 is here while the Linux version is here.\nThis Mozilla page has a list of all news features that are part of Firefox 4 beta, including the compact start button, and am not sure if much has changed in the latest RC.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Mozilla","News","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 4 RC Available for Download"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-07T18:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/07/google-acquires-beatthatquote-for-61-5-million/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable wrote: Google has broken new ground in the personal finance realm with the purchase of UK price comparison website BeatThatQuote for $61.5 million ($37.7 million GBP).\nBeatThatQuote, launched in 2005, provides price comparisons for UK loans, insurance, legal services, utilities and other financial products. It was named one of the UK’s fastest-growing websites by Nielsen in 2007.\n“Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google,” BeatThatQuote Managing Director John Paleomylites said in a statement on the company’s website. “We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.”\n","tags":["Business","Google","News","Acquisition"],"title":"Google Acquires BeatThatQuote for $61.5 Million"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-07T18:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/07/google-removes-android-malware-so-you-dont-have-to/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews.com: Android handsets infected with malware are getting a cleaning job from Google. On March 2nd, Google removed 21 apps from the Android Marketplace that contained malicious code (the number of infected apps is now 58). Now Google is “remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices” and “pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacker(s) from accessing any more information from affected devices,” according to a blog post by Rich Cannings, Android security lead.\n","tags":["Android","Google","Malware","Security"],"title":"Google removes Android malware so you don't have to"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-06T23:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/06/leaked-windows-8-build-7910-screenshots/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"TechSpot Wrote: A few new Windows 8 user interface screenshots have leaked. Windows 8 build 7910 is part of the Milestone 2 branch, so we’re not seeing the latest, but it is rather interesting that it took just eight minutes to install, approximately 2.5 times faster than Windows 7. You have to thank the Chinese website Win7China for offering a glimpse into the future even though the leaks did include several wallpapers with a “ssh…let’s not leak our hard work” message.\n","tags":["leak","Microsoft","screenshot","Windows","Windows 8"],"title":"Leaked: Windows 8 build 7910 screenshots"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-04T14:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/04/chrome-os-beta-channel-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Chrome OS Beta channel has been updated to R10 release 0.10.156.46 including the new Chrome 10 Beta, new trackpad and several stability and functional improvements over the previous release. This release contains the following security fixes:\nScratchpad application security vulnerability fix In addition to all Chrome 10 new features (see Chrome 10 blogpost), there are several Chrome OS great improvements including:\n3G modem activation fixes 3G connection to the carrier fixes Wi-Fi connectivity/Out of the Box fixes New trackpad and sensitivity setting adjusted Auto update engine and debugging improvements Power optimizations GTalk video/chat optimizations Audio CPU utilization improvements Improved on screen indicators: brightness, network status, update icon There is one known issue:\n","tags":["Beta","Google","google chrome os","Updates"],"title":"Chrome OS Beta Channel Update"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-03-02T14:46:49Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/02/avril-lavigne-released-goodbye-lullaby/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Goodbye Lullaby is the fourth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne. The album was first released on 2 March 2011. Recording sessions began in November 2008, and took place over a period of almost two years, concluding in October 2010. The album’s songs contain mainly stripped down instruments, such as the piano and acoustic guitar. Every song on the album was written by Lavigne, with half of the album being written with co-writers. The album debuted inside the top five in over 15 countries such as the United States and Canada, topping the charts in Japan, Australia, Greece, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Czech Republic. The lead single of the album, “What the Hell”, was released on 7 January 2011, and achieved worldwide chart success; reaching the top twenty in the United States and United Kingdom, the top ten in Europe and Australia and the top five in Asia. The following singles, “Smile” and “Wish You Were Here”, had moderate chart success worldwide. The album also includes an extended version of the soundtrack single for the 2010 film Alice in Wonderland, titled “Alice”.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Avril Lavigne released `Goodbye Lullaby`"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-02T11:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/02/google-acquires-zynamics/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Internet giant buys into security.\nInternet giant Google has acquired software analytics firm Zynamics, it was announced yesterday.\nThe German company, which was founded in 2004 by CEO Thomas Dullien (aka Halvar Flake) to research the automation of reverse engineering and code analysis, now produces four reverse-engineering tools:BinDiff, VxClass, BinNavi and BinCrowd, which are widely used by researchers in the security community.\nGoogle has not provided any clues as to how it plans to make use of the Zynamics technology, other than to bolster the protection offered to Google users. Details of the acquisition were not revealed.\n","tags":["Google","News","Acquisition","Business","Security"],"title":"Google acquires Zynamics"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-01T12:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/01/gmail-back-soon-for-everyone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Gmail Blog posted:\nPosted by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar (24×7)\nImagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty. That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon.\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","report"],"title":"Gmail back soon for everyone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-03-01T12:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/03/01/many-gmail-users-cant-find-their-messages/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Imagine loading Gmail and noticing that all your messages have been deleted. This is a real problem for many Gmail users who thought that they lost all of their messages. Here’s one of the many reports from Gmail’s forum:\nYes, whatever the error is on Google’s end (and it clearly is that, not a hack, unless it’s some kind of inside hack) it’s basically reset my account so it’s like a brand-new Gmail account. My contacts are intact, but nothing else–the folders have reset to default, my signature line is blank, the “theme” is changed back to the default and–of course–every single email from the last 7 years has vanished completely.\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","report"],"title":"Many Gmail Users Can't Find Their Messages"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-02-11T00:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/02/11/announcing-availability-of-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"http://windowsteamblog.com: Today we officially handed off the final release (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to our OEM partners. On February 16th Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will be available for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers as well as Volume License customers. On February 22nd, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will become generally available for folks to download via the Microsoft Download Center and available on Windows Update.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Updates","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Server"],"title":"Announcing Availability of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-02-11T00:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/02/11/internet-explorer-9-rc-download-link-goes-live/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Before IE developers held a press conference in San Francisco to unveil the RC version of IE 9 this morning, Microsoft has released the RC for download here (x86) and here (x64).\nAs expected, the release candidate includes much improved tab functionality, from the new square-ish visual elements, and moveable tab bar elements to increase customization. It also includes features that enable a user to refuse tracking from advertisers.\nIt also promises to fix a number of remaining bugs and minor annoyances that plagued the Beta and developer previews of the browser. The newer, more stable version of the browser needs to be pretty picture perfect if MS wants to regain its market share lost to Chrome and Firefox since IE8 started faltering.\n","tags":["Browsers","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"Internet Explorer 9 RC download link goes live"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2011-02-11T00:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/02/11/life-is-beautiful/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sorry about being late in updating my blog😳\nFinally…\nNO AMRY SERVICE FOR ME…. YAY!🥳\nLast week I got reply from them that no army service for me, I’m so happy!😍\nLater when I had enough time I will write full story about what happened and how everything went well!\nSee you later!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Life is beautiful!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-01-28T21:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/01/28/ill-be-back/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sorry about not updating my blog, I’ll be back! (soon perhaps!)\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"I'll be back!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-01-04T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/01/04/6-common-myths-and-misconceptions-about-malware/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Over the past few decades, computer security has become an important concern among users. Security vendors have faced tremendous challenges dealing with complex security threats with IT experts placing more effort on educating people. Nevertheless, there are many computer security myths that exist today and surprisingly, many people still believe them. In this blog post, we’ll reveal a few of the most common malware myths and the misconceptions that can put you at risk.\n","tags":["Malware","Myths","Security"],"title":"6 Common Myths and Misconceptions About Malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-01-03T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/01/02/malware-prevention-guide-for-Windows/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"To help secure your computer against malware:\nIf your computer is already infected or you are in doubt, first look at the Malware Removal Guide.\nBuild up your malware defenses Install antivirus and antispyware programs from a trusted source Never download anything in response to a warning from a program you didn’t install or don’t recognize that claims to protect your PC or offers to remove viruses. It is highly likely to do the opposite. Get reputable anti-malware programs from a vendor you trust. I recommend Avira. It’s highly recommended that you create another layer of protection beyond Avira. This second layer could be composed with Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, Hitman Pro or any other on-demand antimalware software. Use a safe browser with good extensions I recommend Google Chrome with uBlock and WOT. Update software regularly Cybercriminals are endlessly inventive in their efforts to exploit vulnerabilities in software, and many software companies work tirelessly to combat these threats. That is why you should:\n","tags":["How to","Windows","Malware","Rescue","Security"],"title":"Malware Prevention guide for Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2011-01-02T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2011/01/02/malware-removal-guide-for-Windows/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" If after following this guide you failed disinfecting your computer, or you cannot follow this guide yourself, I will be available to help you.\nThe most important thing in fighting malwares is:\nDo NOT Panic. Do NOT Hurry. Do NOT ignore any step in removal guide unless I tell you. This manual for removing malwares can be used for either minor or major malware infection.\nDownload and Burn Avira Rescue System to a blank Disc, Boot your computer using that and let it scan and remove malwares detected. Restart your computer into safe-mode with networking. (How to use Safe Mode?) Clean temporary files using TFC. [Let it reboot your computer, come back to Safe Mode With Networking] Download HitmanPro to your desktop, run it in force breach mode and click next to scan your computer, let it remove the malwares it find, if it ask you for license active the 30 Days trial version. after removal, restart your computer. [Try it in Safe Mode With Networking] Download, install and update Malwarebytes Antimalware, let it scan your computer and remove everything it find [Try in Safe Mode With Networking]. Download and run avast! Browser Cleanup to cleanup and reset your browsers. Download and install HostsMan.\nafter install run it, click on “update Hosts”, choose “MVPS Hosts” (and you may choose “Peter Lowe’s AdServers List” for blocking Ads) and in below options choose “Overwrite Current” hosts. this step would immunize your Hosts File and would prevent any internet traffic to malware sites/domains and also would fix Windows Hosts File if it has been HiJacked by malwares. Disable System Restore and then re-enable it again. If you have windows installation disc, insert it into drive, open Run command from start menu (In windows vista/7, open start menu and type ‘Run’ and then press enter) and type ‘sfc /scannow’. this will check windows for mission or corrupted files and will restore them from disc. sometimes during getting infection or malware removal some files might get corrupted or being deleted which this action will solve it. Make sure your windows and all installed programs are fully updated and there are no insecure program: Check for Update. also you may do some additional scans too, here is some of them:\n","tags":["How to","Windows","Malware","Rescue","Security"],"title":"Malware Removal guide for Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-31T12:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/31/happy-new-year/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hello ‘Omid’s Blog!’ readers!\nI wish you all a year full of fun, happiness and health in the 2011, hope all your dreams come true in the new year.\nBest Wishes\n-Omid\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"Happy New Year!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-27T17:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/27/christmas-day-facebook-beats-google-most-visited-site-in-uk/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" For the first time ever since the evolution of the Internet, if you went that far!, Facebook received more web visits than Google UK site, on a single day… Christmas Day.\nGoogle’s traffic share is constantly between 8-10% in U.K., while Facebook’s is well between 8-6%. Facebook accounted for 10.50% of the internet traffic in the U.K. on December 25th, marginally surpassing Google (9.77%). So, why was Facebook your favorite website on that day? You tell us!\n","tags":["Facebook","Google","report"],"title":"Christmas Day : Facebook beats Google, most visited site in UK"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-27T17:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/27/red-hat-near-key-support-area/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" New York, December 27th (TradersHuddle.com) – Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) are trading very close to calculated support at $45.27 with current price action closing at just $46.51 places the stock price near levels where traders will start paying attention.\nRed Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) develops and provides open source software and services, including the Red Hat Linux operating system.\nRed Hat’s current stock range is defined by current calculated support defined at $45.27 and by the resistance level at $48.78, which should be used by traders planning their trades.\n","tags":["business","RedHat"],"title":"Red Hat Near Key Support Area"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-27T16:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/27/facebooks-value-surpasses-yahoo-ebay/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" A new study from New York securities firm NYPPEX estimates Facebook’s enterprise value is now much higher than Yahoo and EBay, at $41.2 billion and significantly higher than other fast growing startups like LinkedIn, Twitter, Zynga, and Groupon. Facebook’s value has shot up 56 percent since the middle of 2010.\nNone of the startups mentioned above have gone public but many let their employees sell shares in private markets as an incentive for their valued staff members. The private markets let investors buy a piece of a company early on but it is difficult to determine what the price of a share should be.\n","tags":["eBay","Facebook","report","Social Media","Yahoo"],"title":"Facebook’s value surpasses Yahoo, eBay"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-27T16:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/27/google-may-have-told-logitech-to-stop-the-revue/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google really isn’t happy with its TV operating system. In addition to telling companies not to mention their Google TV products at CES next month, now it looks like the search company is actively stopping production on a device that’s already been released.\nAccording to a report on Digitimes.com, Logitech has ordered a suspension of all Logitech Revue components from its supplier, Gigabyte Technology. The Revue is Logitech’s set-top box that turns any TV into a Google TV.\n","tags":["Google","Google TV","Hardware","Logitech"],"title":"Google may have told Logitech to stop the Revue"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-23T16:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/23/cia-launches-w-t-f-wikileaks-task-force/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Washington Post: The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks.\nOfficially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it’s mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.\nThe irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations.\n","tags":["CIA","government","News","WikiLeaks"],"title":"CIA launches W.T.F. (WikiLeaks Task Force)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-21T19:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/21/issues-with-the-recent-update-for-outlook-2007/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" MSDN Blog: On Tuesday, December 14, we released an update (KB2412171) for Microsoft Outlook 2007. We have discovered several issues with the update and want to inform you about problems you might encounter and what corrective steps we recommend. As of December 16, this Outlook 2007 update has been removed from Microsoft Update.\nThis Outlook 2007 update was distributed via Microsoft Update. Many of you receive updates automatically and if you installed the update between Tuesday, December 14, and Thursday, December 16, it is likely that you are affected.\n","tags":["issues","Microsoft","Outlook","solution","Updates"],"title":"Issues with the recent update for Outlook 2007"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-20T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/20/your-own-email-facebook-com-beware-facebook-survey-scam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Thousands of Facebook users have been hit by a scam which claims to give them early access to a facebook.com email address.\nMessages, appearing in the news feed of users who have fallen for the scam, read:\nJust got my own email @facebook.com! Quickly get one before someone takes your name [LINK]\nHowever, clicking on the links leads you to a webpage which tricks you into giving a third party application permission to post to your Facebook wall.\n","tags":["Facebook","scam","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Your own email @facebook.com? Beware Facebook survey scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-20T19:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/20/new-hacked-site-notifications-in-search-results/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Today we’ve added a new notification to our search results that helps people know when a site may have been hacked. We’ve provided notices for malware for years, which also involve a separate warning page. Now we’re expanding the search results notifications to help people avoid sites that may have been compromised and altered by a third party, typically for spam. When a user visits a site, we want her to be confident the information on that site comes from the original publisher.\nHere’s what the notification looks like:\n","tags":["Google","News","Search","Security"],"title":"New hacked site notifications in search results"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-17T15:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/17/are-you-ready-for-opera-11/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Newest Opera browser features tab stacking, extensions, visual mouse gestures Oslo, Norway — December 16, 2010 Opera Software debuted the newest version of its award-winning browser today. Opera 11 combines elegant design, smart updates to some of our most popular features and new ways to customize Opera to your preferences. Download it today for Windows, Mac and Linux computers from http://www.opera.com/.\nWhat’s new Tab stacking Tab stacking is a better way to organize your open tabs. Simply drag one tab on top of another to create a stack. Here is a short video to introduce tab stacking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hqSGGk1YTI\n","tags":["Browsers","Opera","software","Updates"],"title":"Are you ready for Opera 11?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-15T16:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/15/dont-lie-to-me-angelina/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Earlier this year I received a Facebook invite in my Yahoo! Mail account from none other than Angelina Jolie herself. I kid you not.\nWhile it’s true that we live in the Digital Age where communicating with anyone is a mere tap of a finger away—whether it’s via email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, etc.—the chances that Ms. Jolie would randomly reach out to a regular Joe, such as myself, is still pretty darn improbable. So, the following questions raced through my mind:\n","tags":["advice","alert","Phishing","report","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Don’t Lie to Me, Angelina!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-15T16:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/15/17-security-updates-on-ms-patchday/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" As announced Friday last week, Microsoft delivers 17 security updates on the December 2010 Patchday. The Updates close 2 highly critical security holes which allow for remote code execution and several privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow attackers to gain administrative rights on Windows PCs. Overall, the 17 Updates deal with 40 vulnerabilities.\nAffected are the Windows operating Systems, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Exchange. Users and administrators should apply the patches as soon as possible!\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Microsoft Office","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows"],"title":"17 Security Updates on MS Patchday"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-12-15T15:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/15/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part7/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"In continue from Days are still going on, but how?–Part6\nAfter about one month, I got letter from Military office, invitation for about 3 weeks later, so I went on the time.\nSince last time I went I saw these times they say is not accurate, I did not hurry! I went there with bus this time (I went to bank to pay $$$ a few days before). I went there and knew where I must go this time, I waited until they called my name, I though I’m going to military or I’m not going, not any other option!, well, I went in and gave them my recent test results, they read it and looked at me and said to each other yeah he look likes to have problem! (God damn! what I kind of doctor they are, they have my test results in their hand and decide about my problems depending on my face? Holy shit!), the second doctor read my test results and…:\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-15T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/15/the-top-50-passwords-you-should-never-use/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Are you one of the many people who is using a dangerously easy-to-guess password?\nMaybe now’s the time to fix that before it’s too late.\nTwitter, LinkedIn, World of Warcraft and Yahoo are amongst the popular websites which are advising users to change their passwords in light of the recent security breach at the Gawker Media family of sites.\nThe issue is that many people (33% in our research) use the same password on every single website. That means that if your password gets stolen in one place (like Gawker’s Gizmodo or Lifehacker websites), it can be used to unlock access to other sites too.\n","tags":["Security","Password"],"title":"The top 50 passwords you should never use"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-12T12:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/12/lastpass-acquires-xmarks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"In our efforts to bring you expanded, go-anywhere access to your data, we’re happy to announce that LastPass recently acquired Xmarks!\nXmarks is a popular browser add-on that syncs bookmarks across all of your computers and smartphones. Just like LastPass, Xmarks can be installed for free on your browsers to give you easy access to your bookmarked sites.\nXmarks now also offers a Premium version\nwith bookmark support on your iPhone and Android, as well as advanced features and priority support. Sign up now to take advantage of the special discount with a dual-Premium subscription.\n","tags":["Browsers","News","Xmarks"],"title":"LastPass Acquires Xmarks!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-11T00:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/11/plenty-of-updates-announced/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: Next Tuesday is going to be tough for administrators: The Redmond company announces 17 security bulletins which are supposed to fix 40 security vulnerabilities. Only two of the bulletins deal with “high”ly critical rated security holes within Windows and the Internet Explorer. The rest of the updates fixes the Windows operating systems, Microsoft’s Office, SharePoint and Exchange.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Security","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows"],"title":"Plenty of Updates announced"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-11T00:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/11/quicktime-7-6-9-update-resolves-15-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" This week Apple announced the availability of QuickTime 7.6.9 for OS X 10.5 and Windows platforms. This release fixes 13 vulnerabilities in QuickTime for OS X Leopard and 15 vulnerabilities on the Windows platform. Keep in mind that if you use iTunes it requires that you install QuickTime as well, so be sure to check for updates.\nApple has provided a direct download link for IT folks at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/. All 13 vulnerabilities for OS X can cause unexpected application termination (what you and I call a crash, but you can’t say crash on a Mac) or arbitrary code execution (make QuickTime run programs… BAD).\n","tags":["Apple","QuickTime","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"QuickTime 7.6.9 update resolves 15 vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-11T00:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/11/dutch-police-website-attacked-after-arrest-of-suspected-hacker/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Just a day after Dutch police arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with WikiLeaks-related denial-of-service attacks, websites belonging to the Netherlands computer crime cops and prosecutors have been struck with a similar assault.\nDennis Janus, a spokesman for the National Police Service confirmed that both the police website, and that of the National Prosector’s Office had been offline for much of the day, with many theorizing that the likely reason is a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack similar to that which was launched against MasterCard, PayPal and other firms.\n","tags":["attack","hack","report","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"Dutch police website attacked after arrest of suspected hacker"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T23:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/christina-aguilera-blames-hacker-for-risque-leaked-photos/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Semi-nude pictures of Christina Aguilera leaked onto the internet earlier this week, causing fans of the pint-sized pop diva to feverishly run to their search engines in the hunt for the private snaps.\nRegular readers should know only too well about the dangers that can be associated with hunting for such material – with nude pictures of Twilight star Ashley Greene and snaps of princess-to-be Kate Middleton recently being used as bait for the unwary.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","leak","News","report","Security"],"title":"Christina Aguilera blames hacker for risqué leaked photos"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T23:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/google-maps-for-android-to-add-3d-and-offline-support/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Get ready, folks with no sense of direction; Google Maps 5.0 app for Android is looking to make your life a lot easier with 3D graphics, more accurate orientation and the ability to function offline.\nAccording to Gizmodo, the app — which was demoed at D: Dive Into Mobile conference in San Francisco — is much faster than the previous iteration and renders in real time.\n3D buildings are visible at street-level view, which lets you tilt the image and check out your virtual surroundings. The map will also adjust as you move, dictated by the compass, or you can rotate the map yourself if you want to check out various views.\n","tags":["3D","Android","Google","Google Maps","Mobile"],"title":"Google Maps for Android to Add 3D and Offline Support"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/google-launches-tool-to-get-companies-to-back-up-their-e-mails-with-gmail/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has just launched Message Continuity, a cloud-based enterprise solution for backing up corporate e-mail whenever Microsoft Exchange goes down.\nThe new product, powered by Google’s 2007 acquisition of Postini, focuses on giving companies another access point to their e-mail accounts. It essentially creates a complete backup copy of Microsoft Exchange Servers and puts those e-mails into a Google Apps account, replicating that information within Gmail, Calendar and Contacts.\n","tags":["enterprise","Gmail","Google","Email","solution"],"title":"Google Launches Tool to Get Companies to Back Up Their E-mails With Gmail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/whos-using-twitter/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: The Pew Center is out with a new report that focuses on Twitter usage in the U.S., and it reveals that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population uses Twitter.\nYoung adults ages 18 to 29, minority groups — 13% black and 18% Hispanic — and urban dwellers are among the groups with the highest level of Twitter use. The report reveals that women and those with college educations are also slightly more likely than other groups to tweet.\n","tags":["report","Twitter"],"title":"Who’s Using Twitter?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/google-were-activating-300000-android-phones-daily/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Android activations have now surpassed 300,000 per day which equals the number of activations for Symbian worldwide, according to data provided by Google. It also indicates that the now near-continuous stream of new Android phones is having a positive effect on sales overall.\nBack in October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company was activating about 200,000 phones per day. The new number also comes from Google’s engineering chief Andy Rubin, who tweeted it on Wednesday night. It is not out of the question to think that Android may become the top platform in the world early next year.\n","tags":["Android","Google","News","report"],"title":"Google: We're activating 300,000 Android phones daily"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/myspace-introduces-hijacks-with-the-black-eyed-peas/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The Black Eyed Peas have taken over MySpace in an effort to improve its social entertainment offerings.\nHijacks is a project that involves allowing celebrities — like the aforementioned Peas — to “take over” MySpace. Fans will have the opportunity to learn more about these celebrities’ particular interests, while also receiving access to new products and exclusive content.\nSo in the case of the Black Eyed Peas’s MySpace Hijack, fans can do things like play a new 8-bit game, view the band’s featured playlist and learn more about chanteuse Fergie’s love of Italian fashion house Emilio Pucci. Non-MySpace users will be able to view some of the content from the hijack, but actual MySpace membership is necessary to receive access to items like a limited edition Black Eyed Peas badge. This promotion is taking place just a little more than a week after the Black Eyed Peas released their last disc, The Beginning.\n","tags":["celeb","Music","MySpace","News","report"],"title":"MySpace Introduces “Hijacks” With the Black Eyed Peas"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/twitter-celebrates-100-million-new-accounts-in-2010/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Twitter has seen a phenomenal amount of growth in the past year. In fact, the company claims more than 100 million new accounts were opened in 2010.\nTo celebrate, the startup has created an infographic showing off some of the most notable new accounts from this year.\nIt’s quite a motley crew; celebs such as Billy Idol, Tiger Woods, Sylvester Stalone and Cher rub digital elbows with world leaders, including the Dalai Lama, Donald Rumsfeld and Queen Noor of Jordan.\n","tags":["News","report","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter Celebrates 100 Million New Accounts in 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/facebook-announces-first-hacker-cup/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Facebook is known for its hackathons — all-night coding sessions designed to help create new products or improve others. Now the company has announced its first Hacker Cup.\nFacebook says it’s “bring[ing] engineers from around the world together to compete in a multi-round programming competition.” The Hacker Cup is very similar to Google’s popular Google Code Jam.\nContestants will be challenged with solving algorithmic-based problem statements. Those who successfully solve the problems in the allotted period of time will advance to the next round.\n","tags":["Facebook","hack","News","Security"],"title":"Facebook Announces First Hacker Cup"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-10T22:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/10/firefox-and-thunderbird-updates-are-available-security-and-performance-improvement/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Firefox Firefox 3.6.13 and Firefox 3.5.16 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.13.\nFirefox 3.6.13: http://firefox.com\nFirefox 3.5.16: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html\nWe strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","software","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Firefox and Thunderbird updates are available, security and performance improvement"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/adobe-reader-and-google-chrome/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The latest release of Google Chrome includes the Chrome PDF Viewer which won’t properly display some PDF files like Dynamic Forms and PDF Portfolios. While Google Chrome is not a supported browser, the Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape 10.0.0 does actually work with Chrome on Windows.\nIf you want to display your PDF files in Chrome using the Adobe Reader, you can easily disable the native viewer. Just type “about:plugins” in address bar and then disable the Chrome PDF Viewer. You don’t even need to restart.\n","tags":["Adobe","Google","Google Chrome","PDF"],"title":"Adobe Reader and Google Chrome"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/photoshop-cs5-update-12-0-2-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe: The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update (Mac|Win) speeds up painting performance and fixes a number of problems discovered after Photoshop CS5 was released. The most significant fixes in the update include the following:\nA number of potential security vulnerabilities have been addressed Crashing bugs related to typography \u0026 fonts have been addressed Performance of various features has been improved Crashes related to opening 3D layers, sharpening, color management, and scanning via TWAIN devices have been fixed Problems with brush cursors, the histogram progress bar, the display of selection boundaries (“marching ants”), scrolling while using the shift key, and the use of action droplets have been addressed Intermittent file format problems have been addressed Metadata-related bugs related to focus distance and Orphea Studio JPEGs have been fixed In addition you can download a TWAIN plug-in update that includes fixes for multiple document scanning, and a that fixes a crash that could occur when attempting a second scan.\n","tags":["Adobe","Photoshop","software","Updates"],"title":"Photoshop CS5 update (12.0.2) now available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/google-officially-unveils-chrome-web-store/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google officially unveiled the long-anticipated Chrome Web Store at its big Chrome event today.\nThink of the Web Store as the App Store, but for the Chrome browser. The apps work both in the Chrome web browser and in Google’s upcoming Chrome OS.\nGoogle showcased some of the apps that will be available in the Web Store from companies like NPR, The New York Times, EA and Amazon.com.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","Google Chrome","google chrome Web Store","News"],"title":"Google Officially Unveils Chrome Web Store"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/google-chrome-has-120-million-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google revealed during its Chrome press conference today that its web browser now has 120 million users. That’s 50 million more users than it had less than seven months ago.\nChrome is Google’s webkit-based web browser. Launched in September 2008, the browser has gone from zero market share to nearly 10% market share. It’s known for its lightweight design and fast JavaScript rendering.\nHow fast is Google’s web browser growing, though? At its developer conference in May, Google announced that Chrome had 70 million users. That means the browser has increased its user base by around 40% in six and a half months. That’s some serious growth.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","News","report"],"title":"Google Chrome Has 120 Million Users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/microsofts-still-not-talking-about-windows-phone-7-sales-numbers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Windows Phone 7 has been on the market for a little more than a month, but the company still isn’t disclosing how many devices featuring its revamped mobile OS have been sold.\nPressed on the issue by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference on Tuesday, Microsoft Corporate VP for Windows Phone Joe Belfiore would say only that “It’s just too soon to talk about numbers,” though he admitted it will likely take years before Microsoft is near the top of the mobile market share discussion.\n","tags":["business","Microsoft","report","Windows","Windows Mobile"],"title":"Microsoft’s Still Not Talking About Windows Phone 7 Sales Numbers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/celebrities-internet-deaths-raise-1m-for-charity/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mashable: Facebook and the Twitterverse have been a little quieter for the past several days, as some of the networks’ most famous users — including Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Alicia Keys — signed off in the name of charity beginning on Worlds AIDS Day, December 1.\nThe group of celebrities had asked fans to donate to Keys’s Keep a Child Alive organization to revive their Internet presences. But by Monday — six days later — they were only halfway to $1 million and itching to get back on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Usher, “revived” his Twitter presence before the campaign had technically ended. Apparently, the celebrities were more than a little let down by their followers.\n","tags":["celeb","News","report"],"title":"Celebrities’ Internet “Deaths” Raise $1M for Charity"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/google-announces-chrome-os-hardware-and-first-pilot-program/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"BetaNews: One year ago, Google gave the world its first look at Chrome OS, a project taking a new approach to thin clients and terminal computing. The long and the short of Chrome OS is: if the browser is the most-used application on a PC, why would you load it down with anything else?\nChrome OS focuses on computers that are permanently connected, where all apps, data, and user identities and desktops are stored in the cloud. The computers running the OS are designed to be as unencumbered by software as possible, so they can run quickly and reliably. Businesses can run them in secure private clouds just as well as consumers can run them on the public Web.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","google chrome os","Hardware","laptop","News"],"title":"Google announces Chrome OS hardware and first pilot program"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-08T00:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/08/internet-explorer-9-will-feature-do-not-track-functionality/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews: In light of the recent rash of “history sniffing” bugs and the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed “do not track” list, Microsoft today announced that release candidate of Internet Explorer 9 will feature a new tracking protection setting that will keep a user’s browsing habits private from sites looking to harvest browser histories.\nThe new feature of IE9 will let users opt out of sharing their browser information with sites they may not know or necessarily trust. It includes a Tracking Protection List of Web addresses that the browser will call only if the user specifically types the URL into the browser bar. That means any content from a URL that the user has blocked will also not show up in the browser.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","News"],"title":"Internet Explorer 9 will feature \"do not track\" functionality"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T23:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/the-google-cr-48-chrome-os-notebook-is-all-about-the-web/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Google just launched artillery deep into territories held by Microsoft and Apple by making one of the biggest announcements in its history: The reveal of Chrome OS. And in doing so, it has declared war on the traditional desktop model.\nThe Cr-48 Chrome Notebook will be the first official device featuring Chrome OS. Although it’s only being released in a pilot program to beta testers, it’s very much an emissary to consumers (Google’s hopeful allies in the fight). Those of you interested in enlisting can sign up to test the device, but we’re guessing selection will be — well — selective.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","google chrome os","Hardware","laptop","News","Notebook"],"title":"The Google Cr-48 Chrome OS Notebook Is All About the Web"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T23:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/spam-carrying-wikileaks-worm/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: WikiLeaks.org is in the news after their recent publications linked to leaked government documents. Spammers are now leveraging the current level of interest with social engineering techniques to infect users’ computers. Symantec is observing a wave of spam spoofing WikiLeaks to lure users into becoming infected with a new threat.\nThe spam email has subject line “IRAN Nuclear BOMB!” and spoofed headers. The “From” header purports to originate from WikiLeaks.org, although this is not in fact the case, and the message body contains a URL. This URL downloads and runs WikiLeaks.jar which has a downloader ‘WikiLeaks.class’ file. The downloader pulls the threat from http://ugo.file[removed].com/226.exe. Symantec detects this threat as W32.Spyrat.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","report","spam","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"Spam Carrying WikiLeaks Worm"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T23:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/taking-a-look-at-fake-amazon-receipt-generators/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Sunbelt Blog:\nAbove, you can see a vaguely optimistic VirusTotal user summary in relation to a file that’s been doing the rounds for about a month or two. Here is the file in question:\nA “receipt generator”, I hear you ask – what do people want with one of those?\nThe answer, of course, is rather straightforward:\nThis is a particularly interesting scam, as it doesn’t target regular PC users – it targets the people who sell you things, such as the merchants on the Amazon marketplace. This is what the would-be social engineer sees when they fire up the program:\n","tags":["Amazon","Malware","Phishing","report","review","Security"],"title":"Taking a look at fake Amazon receipt generators"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T15:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/after-more-than-24-hours-offline-tumblr-is-back/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Tumblr has returned to the web after a full day’s, err, vacation.\nThe popular blogging/reblogging platform went down yesterday afternoon during some planned maintenance; the exact reasons for the outage are unknown, but Tumblr has mentioned database cluster issues.\nRumors aside, the downtime had nothing whatsoever to do with a 4chan-led DDoS attack.\nThe official company blog states a fact of life for any successful startup: Keeping up with at-scale traffic on a startup’s budget and infrastructure is hard, hard work, “more work than our small team was prepared for,” the blog reads.\n","tags":["Blogging","report","Tumblr"],"title":"After More Than 24 Hours Offline, Tumblr Is Back"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T15:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/amazon-to-unveil-new-kindle-web-app-tomorrow/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: After launching its own incredibly successful, single-purpose hardware and a slew of free apps for mobile and PC devices, Amazon is getting ready to launch a new web app version of Kindle.\nAmazon’s timing is impeccable, particularly if the tech giant is trying to take the wind out of Google’s sails; Google just launched its own e-reading, e-bookstore platform today.\nAn Amazon rep said in an e-mail to ComputerWorld that the new version of the web app is intended to “enable users to read full books in the browser and any website to become a bookstore offering Kindle books” — exactly what Google E-books aims to do with its own platform. The previous version of Kindle for Web, as the app is properly called, was not nearly as noteworthy, allowing users to read only first-chapter previews of books online.\n","tags":["Amazon","Hardware","News","Web App"],"title":"Amazon to Unveil New Kindle Web App Tomorrow"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T15:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/download-google-books-app-for-iphone/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google has just released ‘Google Books’ app for iOS. The Google Books app offers access to over 2 million Google eBooks on iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Take your favorite books with you on the go. The app is free and requires to sign in with your Google account.\nGoogle Books Features:\nGreat Reading Experience\n– Change font, search within book, information about book\n– Night-reading mode\n– Offline reading mode\n","tags":["Google","Apple","Offer","suggestion"],"title":"Download Google Books App for iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T13:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/twitter-trend-poisoning-cookbook/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Connect: We have become familiar enough with malware creators poisoning popular search engine terms through SEO techniques in order to deliver their malicious files to a greater pool of unsuspecting users. Other popular services such as Twitter have not escaped the watchful eyes of the miscreants. This attack involves pumping out many of the same tweets with different accounts to push them into the Twitter trending list. That way more people are likely to see them even if the individual user accounts being used to send the tweets don’t have that many followers. Incidentally many of the accounts used in this attack don’t have that many followers and are quite fresh – meaning they are probably fake accounts set up specifically for the purpose of spamming tweets.\n","tags":["report","review","spam","Twitter","Twitter Trend","Security"],"title":"Twitter Trend Poisoning Cookbook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T13:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/looks-familiar-yes-from-alureon/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s a normal day to us. We receive a new Bamital virus sample report from a customer, and we provide an analysis. Suddenly, something interesting bursts into my eyes: What’s your thought on this code fragment? At the first glance, this piece of code looks like a non-malicious call to manipulate the Windows Printer SubSystem. But if you’ve analyzed Alureon before, it may look familiar to you. Yes, Alureon also takes advantage of the Windows Print Subsystem to install its payload.\n","tags":["advice","Malware","Offer","review","Security"],"title":"Looks familiar? Yes! From Alureon!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T13:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/malicious-goo-gl-links-spreading-on-twitter-warning/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mashable: A large number of messages containing only the link “goo.gl/R7f68” has appeared on Twitter today, redirecting the users to various malware-laden sites.\nThe messages are mostly coming from disposable accounts, but they also appear on some accounts that appear to be genuine, which indicates that there’s a worm spreading and sending the messages from infected accounts. Furthermore, all of the messages containing the link are sent from the mobile version of Twitter.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Social Media","spam","Twitter","warning","Security"],"title":"Malicious Goo.gl Links Spreading on Twitter [WARNING]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T13:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/improved-avira-antivir-rescue-system/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira programmers spent a lot of work and drastically overhauled the Avira AntiVir Rescue System which is now available in version 3.7.16. Next to a much better usability due to the redesigned user interface and 11 supported languages the new version offers even improved detection and removal capabilities.\nAvira AntiVir Rescue System uses Linux as operating system. The new kernel has much better and wider hardware support. The bootable CD can not only be used to analyse the system for malware infections and remove them, but also enables the user to get access to data on the system in case the operating system won’t start anymore so it can be backed up onto a USB drive, for example.\n","tags":["Avira","News","Security","Updates"],"title":"Improved Avira AntiVir Rescue System"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T12:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/security-issue-in-website-optimizer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Take a look in the Email I got from Google a few minutes ago:\nDear Website Optimizer user,\nWe are writing to inform you of a potential security issue with Website Optimizer. By exploiting a vulnerability in the Website Optimizer Control Script, an attacker might be able to execute malicious code on your site using a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack. This attack can only take place if a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack. While the immediate probability of this attack is low, we urge you to take action to protect your site.\n","tags":["Google","Google website optimizer","Email","privacy","Security"],"title":"Security issue in Website Optimizer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T12:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/google-opens-doors-to-e-bookstore/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"The New York Time: The Google e-bookstore is finally open.\nTom Turvey, head of strategic partnerships at Google, said he thought the book business should have diversity of retail points\nAfter years of planning and months of delays, the search giant Google started its e-book venture on Monday, creating a potentially robust competitor in the digital book market to Amazon, Barnes \u0026 Noble and Apple.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","Google E-Bookstore","News","report","review"],"title":"Google Opens Doors to E-Bookstore"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T11:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/popular-sites-including-youporn-caught-sniffing-user-browser-history/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The Register: YouPorn nabbed in real-world privacy sting\nBoffins from Southern California have caught YouPorn.com and 45 other sites pilfering visitors’ surfing habits in what is believed to be the first study to measure in-the-wild exploits of a decade-old browser vulnerability.\nYouPorn, which fancies itself the YouTube of smut, uses JavaScript to detect whether visitors have recently browsed to PornHub.com, tube8.com and 21 other sites, according to the study. It tracked the 50,000 most popular websites and found a total of 46 other offenders, including news sites charter.net and newsmax.com, finance site morningstar.com and sports site espnf1.com.\n","tags":["Browsers","exploit","Firefox","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","privacy","Safari","Yahoo"],"title":"Popular sites (including YouPorn) caught sniffing user browser history"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T11:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/wikileaked-cable-says-2009-brazilian-blackout-wasnt-hackers-either/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Wired: SAO PAULO — Despite widespread speculation at the time, a massive power outage that left 18 out of the 26 Brazilian states in the dark for up to six hours last year was not the result of a cyber attack, according to a classified diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks last week.\nThe Nov. 10, 2009, blackout came just two days after the CBS News magazine 60 Minutes reported that an earlier outage in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo in 2007 was the work of hackers. And it came just one day after Threat Level reported that, no, it wasn’t.\n","tags":["report","WikiLeaks"],"title":"WikiLeaked Cable Says 2009 Brazilian Blackout Wasn’t Hackers, Either"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T11:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/chinese-hackers-slurped-50-mb-of-us-gov-email/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"The Register: Windows source code tapped, say WikiLeaked docs\nThe Chinese government may have used its access to Microsoft source code to develop attacks that exploited weaknesses in the Windows operating system, according to a US diplomatic memo recently published by WikiLeaks.\nThe June 29, 2009 diplomatic cable claims that a Chinese security firm with close ties to the People’s Republic of China, got access to the Windows source under a 2003 agreement designed to help companies improve the security of the Microsoft operating system. Topsec allegedly worked with a government organization known as CNITSEC, short for the China Information Technology Security Center, which actively worked with “private sector” hackers to develop exploits.\n","tags":["government","hack","Email","Microsoft","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"Chinese hackers ‘slurped 50 MB of US gov email'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-07T09:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/07/gmail-priority-inbox-now-learns-much-faster/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has upgraded its Priority Inbox, a recently launched Gmail feature that automatically places important mail on top of your inbox, with a couple of improvements based on user feedback.\nThe Priority Inbox now reacts much faster to users’ manual corrections. Furthermore, if you hover the mouse cursor over the importance marker of individual emails, you’ll see a short explanation of why that message is considered important.\nAs far as what kind of impact the Priority Inbox has had on Gmail users, Google claims that typical Priority Inbox users spend 43% more time reading important mail compared to unimportant, and 15% less time reading email overall, when compared to Gmail users who don’t use the Priority Inbox.\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","News"],"title":"Gmail Priority Inbox Now Learns Much Faster"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T22:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/w32-yimfoca-b-malware-localization/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The latest W32.Yimfoca.B variants can target malicious links in no fewer than 44 countries and nearly 20 different languages. It has also increased the number of instant messaging applications (previously Yahoo! Messenger) to include the following popular IM clients:\nMsn Messenger Google Talk ICQ Paltalk Skype XFire Here is a code snippet from W32.Yimfoca.B:\nThis picks the desired messages based on a comparison with the full list of countries listed below:\n","tags":["Malware","review","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"W32.Yimfoca.B – Malware Localization"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T21:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/ftc-is-considering-do-not-track-mechanism-for-web-users/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has accepted a preliminary staff report that lays out a framework for Internet privacy and suggests a “do not track” mechanism – possibly a persistent cookie installed on browsers.\nThe agency was careful to point out that the commissioners see privacy measures as a balancing act. The news release quotes FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz:\n“Technological and business ingenuity have spawned a whole new online culture and vocabulary – email, IMs, apps and blogs – that consumers have come to expect and enjoy. The FTC wants to help ensure that the growing, changing, thriving information marketplace is built on a framework that promotes privacy, transparency, business innovation and consumer choice. We believe that’s what most Americans want as well.”\n","tags":["FTC","News","privacy","report"],"title":"FTC is considering “do not track” mechanism for web users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T21:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/hackers-use-malware-to-break-into-computers-of-over-50-pop-stars/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" According to The Telegraph, German prosecutors are accusing two local hackers of breaking into the computers of over 50 pop stars, including Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha.\n(Wouldn’t you have to be pretty brave to blackmail Lady Gaga? She can be, um, scary. )\nRalf Haferkamp, from the Duisburg prosecutor’s office, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that the hackers, two boys of 17 and 23 from the West of Germany, infected the machines with malware in order to steal all sorts of files.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Hackers use malware to break into computers of over 50 pop stars"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T21:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/adobe-update-spam-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Here’s the latest twist in the “membership” site scam: spam emails that tell potential victims to update their Adobe Reader include links to a web site intended to look like something related to Adobe products, but is selling “memberships.”\nThe REAL way to update your Adobe software is on the help menu: help | check for updates (see the end of this blog piece for details).\nThe spam email:\n","tags":["0-Day","Adobe","Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Adobe update spam scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/proxy-services-take-novel-approach-to-privacy/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"You’ve locked down your computer. Nothing is going to bypass your privacy shielding programs. AdBlock is fully loaded, NoScript is ready to roll and RefControl is sending “Party on, Wayne” as your custom referrer to all and sundry.\nHowever, you really want to hide your IP address too and decide to load up one of the many web-based proxy services available.\nSomething humorous I’ve noticed across many web-based proxies recently is that they’re jumping on a marketing strategy that might be slightly at odds with their attempts at privacy for the end-user. In order to keep your private details private, you have to _fill in a survey and hand over a bunch of information to third party marketers.\n_\nType in a URL, hit the “Go” button on the proxy and you’ll see one of these:\n","tags":["advice","Phishing","privacy","Security"],"title":"Proxy services take novel approach to privacy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/this-isnt-a-video-its-a-phish/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"You might be seeing something on your Facebook wall today:\nSadly, it’s not a fun video. It’s just a phish.\nThe link goes to apps. facebook.com/ lookatuhah, which then redirects to a phishing site:\nIn other words, if you’re absent-minded enough to enter your credentials again, they will be used to then send more of these stupid fake videos posts to others — or do any of a number of other rather nefarious things.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Phishing","review","spam","Security"],"title":"This isn't a video, it's a phish"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/more-problems-for-wikileaks-switzerland-cuts-off-founders-bank-account/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Switzerland has taken new action against WikiLeaks by shutting down founder Julian Assange’s bank account.\nPostFinance — which is owned by the Swiss Post, itself a public company owned by the Swiss Confederation — said in a statement earlier today that it has closed Julian Assange’s account for failing to provide proof of Swiss citizenship.\nHere is PostFinance’s statement on its decision:\n“Finance has ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange. The Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process. Assange entered Geneva as his domicile. Upon inspection, this information was found to be incorrect. Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance. For this reason, PostFinance is entitled to close his account. If there is any indication that the information provided by an account holder may not comply with the detailed valid provisions, PostFinance investigates the circumstances in detail and draws the appropriate conclusions.”\n","tags":["WikiLeaks"],"title":"More Problems for WikiLeaks: Switzerland Cuts Off Founder’s Bank Account"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/google-unveils-samsung-nexus-s-with-android-2-3-specifications-price/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google has finally announced its new phone ‘Nexus S’ manufactured by Samsung and is the first phone powered by the latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS. Nexus S is a successor of Nexus One and looks an amazing Android phone with powerful hardware.\nNexus S Official Specifications:\nConnectivity Quad-band GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 Tri-band HSPA: 900, 2100, 1700 HSPA type: HSDPA (7.2Mbps) HSUPA (5.76Mbps) Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g Bluetooth 2.1+EDR Near Field Communication (NFC) Assisted GPS (A-GPS) microUSB 2.0 Display 4.0″ WVGA (480×800) Contour Display with curved glass screen Super AMOLED 235 ppi Capacitive touch sensor Anti-fingerprint display coating Size and weight 63mm x 123.9mm x 10.88mm 129g Hardware Haptic feedback vibration Three-axis gyroscope Accelerometer Digital compass Proximity sensor Light sensor Processor and memory 1GHz Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) processor 16GB iNAND flash memory Cameras and multimedia Back-facing: 5 megapixels (2560×1920) 720 x 480 video resolution H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording Auto focus Flash Front-facing: VGA (640×480) 3.5mm, 4-conductor headset jack\n(stereo audio plus microphone) Earpiece and microphone Software noise-cancellation Battery Talk time up to 6.7 hours on 3G\n(14 hours on 2G) Standby time up to 17.8 days on 3G\n(29.7 days on 2G) 1500 mAH Lithum Ion Software Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) Android Market Calendar Gmail Google Earth Google Maps with Navigation Google Search Google Talk Google Voice Voice Actions YouTube Official Video – Introducing Nexus S\n","tags":["Android","Announcement","Google","Mobile","News","nexus s","samsung"],"title":"Google unveils Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3 [Specifications \u0026 Price]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/google-to-unveil-chrome-os-december-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google’s Chrome team has sent out invites to a press event in San Francisco, “where we plan to share some exciting news about Chrome,” the invitation reads.\nThe event will be hosted at DogPatch Labs’ San Francisco office on Tuesday, December 7 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PT. We will be reporting live from the event.\nWe expect the team will unveil the long-awaited Chrome OS, the first operating system Google has designed for traditional computers, such as desktop PCs, laptops and netbooks, rather than smartphones and/or tablets.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","google chrome os","News"],"title":"Google to Unveil Chrome OS December 7?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/google-acquires-netflix-vudu-and-blockbusters-streaming-video-drm-provider-widevine/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google announced on Friday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Widevine, a Seattle-based company that has focused on DRM and security for streaming internet media for the last decade.\n“The Widevine team has worked to provide a better video delivery experience for businesses of all kinds: from the studios that create your favorite shows and movies, to the cable systems and channels that broadcast them online and on TV, to the hardware manufacturers that let you watch that content on a variety of devices,” said Mario Queiroz, Google Vice President of Product Management.\n","tags":["Google","News","Acquisition","Business"],"title":"Google acquires Netflix, Vudu, and Blockbuster's streaming video DRM provider Widevine"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T20:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/take-screenshots-of-web-pages-in-google-chrome-with-screen-capture-extension-by-google/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Screen Capture (by Google) is an effective and useful extension for Google Chrome, which allows users to quickly and easily capture quality screenshots of Web Pages. The extension has 3 screen capture modes: capture visible content of a tab, a region of a web page, or the whole scrolling webpage as a PNG image.\nIt also offers some editing tools to edit the screenshot before saving it. The screen captures can also be copied to clipboard in a simple click.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","google chrome extension","Tricks"],"title":"Take screenshots of Web Pages in Google Chrome with ‘Screen Capture’ extension by Google"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T19:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/facebook-adds-new-profiles/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira TechBlog: Facebook offers a “new profile” feature that many users adopt very fast. It is possible to mark the best friends and family and show them more prominently with their pictures. Also, it accumulates information like the uers’ work places, where they are living and so on. Even projects and co-workers can be shown now.\nThis may be a useful addition for many users. But it should be used with care; in the end, this feature gives Facebook a deeper insight and more valuable data. Before marking family members, friends and colleagues more prominently in the own profile, users should ask for permission.\n","tags":["advice","Announcement","Facebook","Privacy","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook adds “new profiles”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/wikileaks-now-has-hundreds-of-mirrors/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" WikiLeaks is currently not available at WikiLeaks.org. It recently lost its DNS service provider, and the site itself has been battered by DDoS attacks for more than a week now – ever since it first started releasing secret embassy cables.\nHowever, when highly coveted information once spreads on the web, there’s no stopping it. Case in point: WikiLeaks currently has several hundred mirrors, and although some of these mirrors are incomplete, slow or perhaps even completely unavailable, it’s highly unlikely that any effort will be able to exterminate them all.\n","tags":["WikiLeaks"],"title":"WikiLeaks Now Has Hundreds of Mirrors"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T19:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/facebook-makes-user-profiles-more-visual/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Though it is primarily known as a social networking site, Facebook is actually one of the top destinations for photo sharing, and a new user profile design change unveiled Monday ups the visibility of Facebook photos and encourages users to share personal information in a more visual way.\nTwo years ago, Facebook came forward with some staggering figures about the photo sharing taking place on its sites, which amounted to between 2-3 Terabytes of photos being updated daily with a peak of 300,000 images per second. Facebook would serve about 15 billion photos, and the storage dedicated just to photography amounted to more than a petabyte.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook makes user profiles more visual"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-06T19:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/the-yahoo-aol-merger-rumors-heat-up-but-what-do-they-really-mean/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: The AOL-Yahoo rumors are heating up once again. This time, they involve splitting up the AOL empire into two divisions before engaging in a merger of the two Internet companies.\nAOL has two main components: A content and display advertising business, and its longstanding dial-up business. In the past few years, AOL has focused on developing and expanding its advertising arm, its web portal and its media properties (e.g. Engadget and TechCrunch).\n","tags":["AOL","News","review","Yahoo"],"title":"The Yahoo-AOL Merger Rumors Heat Up, But What Do They Really Mean?"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-12-06T15:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/06/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part6/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In continue from Days are still going on, but how?–Part5\nFirst day after weekend I went to the hospital they told me, I’ve been there about 2:00 PM, guess what?! They said come back tomorrow, why? working time is 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM, we are off now, HUH???? Hospital has off time? you mean patients should go home and come back tomorrow to their beds?!😕 well, I went home and come back next day, I’ve been there about 10:00 AM, They said go to ‘Beliefs and Politics Office’, Ah, what’s this, I went to Floor 4 and to the office, they checked my ID cards and other documents I had (seems for security reason), and then stamp on my forearm,😞 I thought stamp is supposed to be used on paper and not on human body!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part6"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-04T21:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/04/stuxnet-and-wikileaks-what-do-they-have-in-common/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"At first glance, two recent security stories, the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear industry and the WikiLeaks breach of US State Department communications, don’t seem to have much in common, but they do. They are united by a vector, a method of transmission and that vector is removable media.\nI am sure that the Iranians felt pretty secure with air-gapped systems, but like a spark from the burning house next door that finds its way into your shingles, the right USB found its way into the right PC and then suddenly all those uranium enrichment centrifuges running at 807-1210 hz started to act funny and fail in unexpected and reportedly fairly energetic ways (you can see some pics of failed centrifuges here http://web.mit.edu/charliew/www/centrifuge.html and here http://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/NewsAndStories/CentrifugeDamages.htm).\n","tags":["advice","privacy","report","review","Security","Stuxnet","WikiLeaks"],"title":"Stuxnet and WikiLeaks – What do they have in common?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-03T20:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/03/google-chrome-8-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google just released version 8 of its web browser Chrome. It fixes 13 security vulnerabilities of which 4 got rated “high”ly critical – the people reporting these all got rewarded with 1.000 US-$ and 500 US-$, respectively. Additionally to these security fixes, the update to Chrome 8.0.552.215 contains more than 800 bugfixes and stability improvements according to the Google developers.\nThe new version officially includes and uses the built-in, stripped-down PDF reader which is additionally secured with a sandbox. This feature, tied together with Googles sandboxing of the browser processes in general and including and updating the Flash Player automatically makes Chrome one of the most secure, yet full-featured web browsers currently available.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","software","Updates"],"title":"Google Chrome 8 available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-02T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/02/hackers-use-malware-to-break-into-lady-gagas-computer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" According to The Telegraph, German prosecutors are accusing two local hackers of breaking into the computers of over 50 pop stars, including Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha.\n(Wouldn’t you have to be pretty brave to blackmail Lady Gaga? She can be, um, scary. )\nRalf Haferkamp, from the Duisburg prosecutor’s office, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that the hackers, two boys of 17 and 23 from the West of Germany, infected the machines with malware in order to steal all sorts of files.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","malware","Security"],"title":"Hackers use malware to break into Lady Gaga's computer"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-12-01T19:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/01/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part5/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In continue from Days are still going on, but how?–Part4\nI got letter from Military office to say when I must go, it had an additional paper saying how much I must pay to them by going to which bank, Thanks God we don’t pay for breathing at least!\nLast night before going I tried to sleep sooner than other night, so I went to bed 2:00AM, not 4:00AM like other nights!😮 , in the morning I tried to wake up early to be in there on time, I could (Almost! not really!) wake up soon, not on time, after breakfast and collecting everything that I thought is needed in there, I left the home, Suddenly I remember that I’ve not to bank yet, grrr, it’s 7:45 AM now and banks will open at 8:00, also I must be at 8:00AM in the office, so I went to the office and hope I find the bank near the office, in the street where Army office is, I found the bank, good thing!, I paid that much they asked in the paper and continue the way to the office, after giving my mobile to them and then body checking, I went in, woah! how many people are coming today?!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part5"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-01T17:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/01/oficla-downloads-mbr-ransomware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira TechBlog: We discovered a new ransomware threat which is downloaded by a Trojan of the Oficla family. This downloaded threat replaces the MBR (master boot record) of the hard disk with its own MBR which asks the user for a password and thus blocks the loading of the operating system.\nUpon starting the Oficla Trojan and successive execution of the downloaded payload the system will be rebooted and the user will be presented the ransom notice.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Hardware","Malware","News","report","review","Security"],"title":"Oficla downloads MBR Ransomware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-12-01T14:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/12/01/paypals-advise-use-your-bank-account-for-your-paypal-payments-really/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Righard Zwienenberg, Chief Research Officer at Norman posted this on Norman Security Blog, Thanks to Mr.Fagerlid for sharing:\nI have been a user of PayPal for many years, actually ever since PayPal opened its services for international users. PayPal, originally only for US citizens, is now used worldwide with local offices in many countries.\nFrom the Dutch affiliate, I just received the next message from PayPal (the actual message was in Dutch, see picture below):\n","tags":["advice","PayPal","review","Security"],"title":"Paypal’s advise: “Use your bank account for your Paypal-payments”. Really ?!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T23:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/is-an-apple-ipad-2-on-the-way/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"An iPad 2 could hit shelves as early as next year, according to at least one source.\nAn Apple iPad 2 will go into production beginning in December – and hit shelves as soon as Q1 of 2011. That’s the news this week from Economic News Daily, an English-language Taiwanese paper. According to News Daily staff, the new iPad will include FaceTime functionality, fresh display tech, a pair of cameras – one forward-facing – and a USB port.\n","tags":["Apple","gossip"],"title":"Is an Apple iPad 2 on the way?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T23:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/apple-forces-photofast-to-abandon-256gb-upgrade-kit-for-macbook-airs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Remember that peppy aftermarket 256GB SSD upgrade from PhotoFast that easily smoked (on paper anyway) the SSD found in Apple’s latest MacBook Air? It’s been halted upon Apple’s request before it ever went on sale, similarly to those HyperMac batteries before it. 9to5Mac first reported the news based on a source close to the company and we just confirmed it directly with the PhotoFast GM2_SFV1_Air product manager. The risk of losing access to Apple’s product licensing program was just too grave a threat to ignore. So, enjoy your 160MBps max SSD transfer rate and 128GB top-end capacity MBA 11 owners, you’ll get your storage and 250MBps sequential read/write speed bumps only when Apple’s good and ready to provide it themselves — possibly sooner, we’re told, if PhotoFast is given the green light to start sales after Toshiba’s SSD modules (Apple’s MBA partner) are available for purchase.\n","tags":["Apple","Hardware","News","PhotoFast"],"title":"Apple forces PhotoFast to abandon 256GB upgrade kit for MacBook Airs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T23:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/microsoft-to-launch-streaming-internet-tv-subscription-service/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft appears to be preparing themselves to step into the streaming media field alongside Apple, Netflix, Hulu, and other competing providers who have joined their ranks over the past year.\nAccording to two anonymous sources quoted by Reuters in a report published on Monday, Microsoft is holding talks with media conglomerates in an attempt to license networks for a new subscription service they are planning to offer via Xbox, PC, and other devices.\n","tags":["Internet TV","Microsoft","News"],"title":"Microsoft to launch streaming internet TV subscription service"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T23:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/link-to-a-youtube-comment/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"If you happen to find a YouTube comment that’s really interesting and you want to share it with other people, mouse over the comment, click on the “Share” button and copy the link.\nEach YouTube comment has a permalink, but it’s not easy to notice that the comment is displayed below the video in a special section titled “Linked Comment”.\nYou could also use this feature to annotate a video before sharing it with your friends. Post a comment, copy the link and use it to highlight your comment.\n","tags":["Google","tips","YouTube"],"title":"Link to a YouTube Comment"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T23:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/google-earth-6-better-street-view-and-3d-trees/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Earth 6 doesn’t have too many new features. You can now use Street View just like in Google Maps by dragging the pegman icon. “To view street-level imagery for a specific location, zoom into an area at an altitude of approximately 500km. You will see a pegman icon appear at the top right below the navigation controls. Click and drag the icon across the 3D viewer. A blue border will appear around roads that have street-level imagery available,” explains Google.\n","tags":["3D","Announcement","Beta","Google","google earth","Google Maps","software","StreetView","Updates"],"title":"Google Earth 6: Better Street View and 3D Trees"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T23:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/pirate-bay-ruling-sparks-ddos-attacks-against-ifpi/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The Anonymous group takes revenge after legal decision against Pirate Bay founders\nv3.co.uk: An online collective known as Anonymous has carried out a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) after the trade body welcomed the new court ruling against the founders of The Pirate Bay.\nThe Swedish appeals court decision saw the jail terms of the men reduced but their fines increased in a move that IFPI chief executive Frances Moore argued should be the end of the debate around the issue.\n","tags":["hack","News","report","ThePirateBay","Security"],"title":"Pirate Bay ruling sparks DDoS attacks against IFPI"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T22:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/iran-computer-malware-sabotaged-uranium-centrifuges/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":" A security man stands next to an anti-aircraft gun as he scans Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz, 300 kilometers [186 miles] south of Tehran, Iran, in April 2007.\nWired: In what appears to be the first confirmation that the Stuxnet malware hit Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that malicious computer code launched by “enemies” of the state had sabotaged centrifuges used in Iran’s nuclear-enrichment program.\n","tags":["Iran","Malware","News","report","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"Iran: Computer Malware Sabotaged Uranium Centrifuges"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T22:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/windows-vista-windows-7-kernel-bug-can-bypass-uac/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Now this is not the first time Windows UAC has hit the news for being flawed, back in February 2009 it was discovered that Windows 7 UAC Vulnerable – User Mode Program Can Disable User Access Control and after that in November 2009 it was demonstrated that Windows 7 UAC (User Access Control) Ineffective Against Malware.\nA zero-day for Windows 7 back in July of this year also bypassed Windows UAC.\n","tags":["0-Day","alert","Hijack","Security","Vulnerability","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Vista"],"title":"Windows Vista \u0026 Windows 7 Kernel Bug Can Bypass UAC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T22:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/wikileaks-hit-by-another-ddos-attack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks was hit by another massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack earlier this morning. On Sunday, the site was taken down for several hours via a sustained DDoS attack, just hours before the release of thousands of secret U.S. documents.\nResponsibility for Sunday’s attack was claimed by a single hacker, the Jester, though many are skeptical that it was the work of just one person.\nToday’s attack, which was initially focused on http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/, has been much more intense. At 9:00 a.m. ET, WikiLeaks tweeted, “DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.”\n","tags":["attack","hack","News","report","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"WikiLeaks Hit By Another DDoS Attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T22:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/winamp-is-back-with-powerful-android-media-player/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" One of the greatest setbacks of the Android platform has been the absence of a killer media player, as its native media player is simply lacking. To date, DoubleTwist has been the best option, but Winamp for Android is a powerful new alternative.\nBefore the turn of the century (a.k.a. the Wild West of file sharing), Winamp reigned supreme for MP3 playback on Windows. Now I haven’t used a Winamp product since I learned about foobar2000 back in 2002, but it’s often nice to see the resurgence of a familiar face in tech.\n","tags":["Android","Music","software","Updates","Winamp"],"title":"Winamp Is Back With Powerful Android Media Player"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T21:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/hacker-takes-responsibility-for-wikileaks-takedown/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that took down WikiLeaks as the site published secret U.S. embassy cables over the weekend could be the work of a single hacker, working for his own agenda.\nThe hacker, called the Jester (or th3j35t3r), describes himself as a “hacktivist for good” and posts the message “TANGO DOWN” after a successful attack, together with a link of the sites he takes down. The focus of his attacks, the Jester claims in his Twitter Bio, is “obstructing the lines of communication for terrorists, sympathizers, fixers, facilitators, oppressive regimes and other general bad guys.”\n","tags":["attack","hack","News","report","Twitter","WikiLeaks","Security"],"title":"Hacker Takes Responsibility for Wikileaks Takedown"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T21:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/kim-kardashian-tops-bings-most-popular-searches-of-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Bing is getting an early start on the “best of 2010” lists, releasing its compilation of the year’s most popular search terms a little more than a month before the New Year.\nReality TV star Kim Kardashian tops the list, which is dominated by celebrities; in fact, seven of the top 10 terms are people, as you can see in the list:\nKim Kardashian Sandra Bullock Tiger Woods Lady Gaga Barack Obama Hairstyles Kate Gosselin Walmart Justin Bieber free Kardashian’s online dominance extends beyond searches, however. You may recall that a recent study pegged her as the celeb that gets the most traffic to their website via Twitter (despite not having the largest audience).\n","tags":["Bing","celeb","News","report","review","Search","Yahoo"],"title":"Kim Kardashian Tops Bing’s Most Popular Searches of 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T20:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/george-w-bush-to-visit-facebook-hq-for-live-video-qa/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s book tour will stop at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto on Monday, with the social networking site announcing a “Facebook Live” event for 5 p.m. ET / 2 p.m. PT.\nBush has been making the media rounds over the past several weeks, appearing on The Today Show, Oprah and The Tonight Show among other programs to talk about his memoir “Decision Points.”\n","tags":["Facebook","Interview","Social Media","Video"],"title":"George W. Bush to Visit Facebook HQ for Live Video Q\u0026A"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T17:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/politics-and-malware-make-strange-bedfellows/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Sophos Labs: There are two stories that have been the focus of much speculation that have come to some closure today. New information confirming many peoples suspicions about Aurora and Stuxnet have been reported by Wikileaks.org and Reuters.\nAs has been widely reported Wikileaks began releasing over 250,000 previously secret diplomatic cables that it is assumed they received from PFC. Bradley Manning. Most of the cables are as uninteresting as reading your friends Yahoo! mail.\n","tags":["Malware","News","Politics","report","review","WikiLeaks","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Politics and malware make strange bedfellows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T17:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/fake-trojan-removal-kit-serves-up-thinkpoint-rogue/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"You might want to steer clear of the following fake security program, being promoted as a “Windows Trojan Removal Kit” but actually hijacking your PC in the form of the ThinkPoint rogue with a mixed (24/43) detection rate.\nThe file is currently being offered up by your typical “fake security scan” pages, such as microsoftwindowssecurity152(dot)com. Those familiar with this particular rogue will be aware that it tends to stick with domains similar to the one above.\n","tags":["alert","Hijack","Malware","report","review","rogue software","Security"],"title":"Fake Trojan Removal Kit serves up ThinkPoint Rogue"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-30T16:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/30/facebook-co-founder-launches-social-network-jumo-for-social-good/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":" CNN – Mashable: Today, users can start connecting with all their favorite social causes in one online sphere, as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has launched his much-buzzed-about social network, Jumo.\nHughes, who left Facebook in 2007 to become the Obama campaign’s director of online organizing, soft-launched Jumo last March.\nAt that time the site existed merely as a homepage featuring a rather intriguing survey box that asked the site visitor an array of questions from, “If you had a daughter tomorrow, which would you name her?” to “Would you say the world is getting better or worse?”\n","tags":["Announcement","Facebook","Jumo","News","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook co-founder launches social network Jumo for social good"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-29T18:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/29/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part4/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In continue from Days are still going on, but how?–Part3\nAfter living 24 hours with that Holter during walking, sleeping, eating and weeing!!🤣 I come back to the hospital to get rid of it and get the result, the guy connected that device to computer and printed result, wow, 10 Pages result!\nI went to show result to Doctor and ask him to confirm my document, GRRRR, he is not here today, I’ve to come back tomorrow…\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part4"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-28T23:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part3/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"In continue from: Part 2 of ‘Life is going on But how?’\nNext day and time to connect that Holter Monitor (Not for Heart rhythm, for Blood Pressure, a few different from what you might know).\nThey got a lot of money (enough said!) and my ID Card until I return this device to them, now going back to home!\nNotice my left arm, it’s blowing air to that thing to take my Blood Pressure every 15 minutes, yeah I felt it ****ed my hand during this 24 hours!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part3"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-28T22:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part2/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In continue from: Part 1 of ‘Life is going on But how?’\nNext day, I went to hospital again, I went for ‘Heart’, This damned doctor is not here again, so I went upper floor again asking for doctor for the ‘Thyroid’, Oh, That Doctor is in the room next to the doctor I met yesterday, again same secretary!\nMe: Hi again! He: Hi dear Kamran! Me: I’m not Kamran!! He: I Know! Me: So? He: What do you need? Me: I’m here for another problem, this time Thyroid He: Doctor will come 6:00PM Me: Oh, It’s just.. let me see… 1:00PM He: Well… Me: Ok, write my name in the list, at least to be first one meet him. He: Ok! try to come back sooner than 6:00 Me: I will be here! He: I Love You!! Me: (In my mind: sh*t!)⏳ I went out of Hospital, call my friend and told him I’m walking around the hospital until afternoon, he said he will come here, ummm it’s good, at least It will not be boring with him, he came and we went to the computer store near there to see what’s new in the market, it was about 4:00PM we back to Hospital, I saw secretary of doctor I needed for ‘heart’, I asked him about Doctor, he said hurry up, come on! Doctor came here for a few minutes, I ran to lower floor, Damn!, secretary sent me to pay, WTF!, This one is more than what I paid for Liver!! No problem..!!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part2"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-28T22:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/days-are-still-going-on-but-how-part1/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"About 6 months ago, I decide to go pass my military service, It’s a compulsory military service for every boy over 18 years old in my country.\nWell, a few months ago before that, I decide to try my chance to use my ‘illness’ prevent spending 18 months of my life in there, so I visited my doctor and he used some test, picture bla bla to prepare my Medical Documents, Thanks Doctor!\n","tags":["My Life"],"title":"Days are still going on, but how?–Part1"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-28T20:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/wikileaks-targeted-in-ddos-attack-as-latest-leak-hits-the-web/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks is reporting that it’s under a “mass distributed denial of service attack” just as its much-hyped leak of secret embassy cables has been leaked early on Twitter.\nAccording to a tweet from the website’s official Twitter account, WikiLeaks is experiencing a DDoS attack. The reported attackers are not yet known. Several reports state that the website has been experiencing intermittent downtime. We are currently attempting to verify that WikiLeaks is indeed under attack.\n","tags":["attack","News","WikiLeaks"],"title":"WikiLeaks Targeted in DDoS Attack as Latest Leak Hits the Web"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-28T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/can-you-really-see-who-viewed-your-facebook-profile-rogue-application-spreads-virally/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" SophosLab: Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile.\nAs we’ve described a couple of times before, plenty of Facebook users would *love* to know who has been checking them out online.. but unfortunately scammers are aware of this, and use the lure of such functionality as a way to trick you into making bad decisions.\n","tags":["Facebook","Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-28T20:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/comment-on-stuxnet-and-more-windows-0-days/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Over the last few days, some news organizations have been saying that Stuxnet source code is available on the black market, and that clearly therefor there is an impending Internet Armageddon.\nThis is patently silly, on a number of levels, but silly none-the-less.\nFirst thing is that I flat-out don’t believe Stuxnet source is available for sale on the black market or anywhere. Remember how often I say that if something sounds too good to be true, it’s not true? Well, the opposite applies too. If something sounds too bad to be true, it’s not true either. We really don’t know who built Stuxnet, or who the intended target was, be we may rest assured that whoever put that much work into it, isn’t selling it, at any price. It’s actually more probable that some no-honor-among-thieves bad guy is scamming fellow bad guys. “Sure, this is Stuxnet source code. Prove otherwise.”\n","tags":["0-Day","report","Vulnerability","Windows","Security"],"title":"Comment on Stuxnet and more Windows 0-days"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-28T20:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/28/closer-look-at-w32ramnit-c/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Thomas Wegele, Virus Researcher from Avira wrote: In this month’s ITW malware set from the Wildlist organization two new variants of W32/Ramnit appeared. W32/Ramnit is a Worm spreading via infected executable files and infected HTML Files. It is a quite widespread malware – which is why we decided to dig deeper into it.\nUpon execution the malware creates a new file in the directory where it was started. This file is named “mgr.exe”. It then gets executed and creates a copy of itself in “C:%ProgramDir%\\Microsoft\\WaterMark.exe” which also gets executed after creation and in turn infects the EXE, DLL and HTML files found on the system and tries to connect to a server.\n","tags":["AMD","Malware","report","review","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Closer look at W32/Ramnit.C"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-27T20:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/27/the-pirate-bay-founders-sentenced-to-jail/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Swedish Appeals Court upheld the conviction and jail sentences of three co-founders behind the infamous The Pirate Bay service. Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom all received one-year jail sentences and $4.2 million in fines from a Swedish lower court earlier in the year.\nAfter the court ruling, Neij has been given a 10-month sentence, Sunde received an eight-month sentence, and Lundstrom was given a four-month sentence. A different defendant will be sentenced at a later date because he was unavailable due to illness.\n","tags":["News","report","ThePirateBay"],"title":"The Pirate Bay founders sentenced to jail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-27T17:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/27/google-chrome-and-multiple-profiles/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Chrome has always supported multiple profiles, but you had to use a command-line flag (–user-data-dir=”c:\\path\\to\\the\\profile”) to associate a profile with a folder where the browser will save its state.\nAt some point, Google added an option that allowed you to open a new window and use a separate profile, but it was quickly removed. According to a design document from Chromium’s site, this feature be available again.\n“The multiple profiles feature will allow the user to associate a profile with a specific set of browser windows, rather than with an entire running instance of Chrome. Allowing different windows to run as different Chrome identities means that a user can have different open windows associated with different Google accounts, and correspondingly different sets of preferences, apps, bookmarks, and so on — all those elements which are bound to a specific user’s identity.”\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Tricks"],"title":"Google Chrome and Multiple Profiles"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-25T20:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/25/rainbow-0-2-is-here/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"For those who missed this update on Nov 18:\nIn the spirit of releasing early and releasing often – Mozilla bring you version 0.2 of Rainbow – an experimental Firefox add-on from Mozilla Labs that exposes audio and video recording capabilities to web pages.\nWhat’s new in this release? It now support both audio and video recording on Windows, and audio recording on Linux. They added preliminary support for writing multiplexed media frames to a websocket. JS callers are now able to specify custom video resolutions, encoding quality, audio sampling rates and channels. Numerous bug fixes, such as behaving correctly on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and generating correctly encoded OGG files (the audio tracks of which were previously unplayable by Firefox). For a full list of changes, check out their commit logs – or even better – contribute on Github! Also, don’t forget to read the README for additional information.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox Addon","Mozilla"],"title":"Rainbow 0.2 is here!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-25T20:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/25/miramar-thunderbird-3-3-alpha-1-available-for-testing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla announced Miramar Alpha 1, an early version of their next Thunderbird.\nMiramar Alpha 1, available here for download, is for testers, extension developers, and other friends who are curious to follow the development of the next release of Thunderbird.\nMiramar Alpha 1 is built on top of the next generation of Mozilla’s layout engine, Gecko 2.0 and includes a new Addon Manager and over 190 platform fixes to improve performance and stability. We expect to release further interim releases as we work towards a major new release of Thunderbird.\n","tags":["Announcement","Mozilla","Thunderbird"],"title":"Miramar (Thunderbird 3.3) Alpha 1 available for testing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-24T16:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/24/beware-the-justin-bieber-erection-facebook-scam/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"That’s possibly the most unlikely headline I’ve ever had to write in my computer security career, but never mind..\nMy guess is that regular readers of the Naked Security site might not be ardent fans of Justin Bieber – but chances are that some of you have young daughters or nieces who can’t get enough of the pint-sized pop hamster.\nIf that’s the case then they might be intrigued by a message that is spreading virally across the Facebook social network claiming to be footage of… and how can I put this delicately? I don’t think I can.. Justin Bieber with an erection.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Beware the Justin Bieber erection Facebook scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-24T16:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/24/miley-cyrus-and-cybercriminals-make-strange-bedfellows/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Miley Cyrus is eighteen years old since yesterday.\nI don’t know if her father, legendary “Achy Breaky Heart” singer Billy Ray Cyrus, will be joining in her birthday celebrations, but I imagine he’ll be quietly wiping away a tear as his daughter finally becomes officially an adult (at least as far as the age of consent in her home state of Tennessee is concerned).\nThe pop singer and Hannah Montana star has had her fair share of encounters with the world of cybercrime during her short life.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Miley Cyrus and cybercriminals make strange bedfellows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-24T15:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/24/christmas-tree-app-virus-hoax-spreads-on-facebook/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Thousands of Facebook users are warning each other about a Christmas Tree virus said to be spreading in the form of a rogue application on the social network.\nThe only problem with this warning? It’s utterly bogus.\nHere’s a typical message being shared widely on Facebook:\nWARNING!!!!!!…..DO NOT USE THE Christmas tree app. on Facebookplease be advised it will crash your computer. Geek squad says its oneof the WORST trojan-viruses there is and it is spreading quickly.Re-post and let your friends know. THANKS PLEASE REPOST!\n","tags":["Facebook","hoax","report","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Christmas Tree app virus hoax spreads on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-24T15:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/24/over-40-security-fixes-for-ipad-iphone-and-ipod-touch-in-ios-4-2/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Yesterday, Apple pushed out the much anticipated update to its mobile operating system – iOS 4.2.\nAlthough most of the headlines have focused on new functionality Apple has introduced, such as bringing folders and multi-tasking to the iPad, there’s a much more important reason why you should be considering updating your Apple iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.\nSecurity.\nAccording to an Apple knowledgebase article, iOS 4.2 includes more than 40 security fixes designed to better protect iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users.\n","tags":["Apple","report"],"title":"Over 40 security fixes for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch in iOS 4.2"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-24T15:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/24/lost-laptop-leads-to-first-data-protection-act-fine-for-uk-firm/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined two organizations for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act – the first to be issued under new tougher guidelines in the UK.\nThe security breach at Sheffield-based firm A4e happened in June 2010, after the company issued an unencrypted laptop to an employee in order to do work from home. The laptop was subsequently stolen from the employee’s house.\nThat wouldn’t have mattered too much, of course, if the laptop hadn’t contained sensitive information. Unfortunately it carried personal data relating to 24,000 people who had used community legal advice centers in Hull and Leicester.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Lost laptop leads to first Data Protection Act fine for UK firm"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-24T15:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/24/safe-holidays-season/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: Thanksgiving and according holidays are very close – a time in which many people have the time to do (online) shopping. The cyber criminals are eager for their share, so it’s time to remember some safety measures.\nWe are expecting to see spam and phishing campaigns luring the recipients to visit malicious web sites. These web sites usually look quite legal and official. As precaution, don’t follow links from emails to online stores and online payment systems, but use bookmarks or type in the addresses directly into the browser’s address bar. And of course just visit shops which you already know. Some scams can be identified by very low prices – if they look too good to be true, they usually are!\n","tags":["advice","alert","warning","Security"],"title":"Safe holidays season"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-22T00:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/22/7-zip-version-9-is-out/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"For those who missed this update on Nov 18:\n7-Zip 9.20 was released.\n7-Zip for 32-bit Windows:\nhttp://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920.exe\nMirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_7zip_32/\n7-Zip for 64-bit Windows x64:\nhttp://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920-x64.msi\nMirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_7-zip_64/\nWhat’s new after 7-Zip 4.65 (2009-02-03):\n7-Zip now supports LZMA2 compression method. 7-Zip now can update solid .7z archives. 7-Zip now supports XZ archives. 7-Zip now supports PPMd compression in ZIP archives. 7-Zip now can unpack NTFS, FAT, VHD, MBR, APM, SquashFS, CramFS, MSLZ archives. 7-Zip now can unpack GZip, BZip2, LZMA, XZ and TAR archives from stdin. 7-Zip now can unpack some TAR and ISO archives with incorrect headers. 7-Zip now supports files that are larger than 8 GB in TAR archives. NSIS and WIM support was improved. Partial parsing for EXE resources, SWF and FLV. The support for archives in installers was improved. 7-Zip now stores NTFS file timestamps to ZIP archives. Speed optimizations in PPMd codec. Speed optimizations in AES code for Intel’s 32nm CPUs. Speed optimizations in CRC calculation code for Intel’s Atom CPUs. New -scc{WIN|DOS|UTF-8} switch to specify charset for console input/output (default = DOS). New -scrc switch to calculate total CRC-32 during extracting / testing. New additional “Open archive \u003e” item in context menu allows to select archive type for some files. It’s possible to specify Diff program in options (7-Zip File Manager). 7-Zip now can open/copy/compress disk images (like \\.\\c:) from \\.\\ folder. 7-Zip File Manager now doesn’t use temp files to open nested archives stored without compression. The console version now doesn’t show entered password. New small SFX module for installers (in Extra package). Disk fragmentation problem for ZIP archives created by 7-Zip was fixed. Some bugs were fixed. New localizations: Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Tatar, Uyghur, Kazakh. ","tags":["software","Updates"],"title":"7-Zip version 9 is out"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-21T22:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/21/never-gonna-come-back-down/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Don’t he rock?!\nThis video is made years ago, but just recently is published in iTune.\n","tags":["link","Video"],"title":"Never gonna come back down!"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-21T22:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/21/its-getting-colder-here/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Good news, at least for me who love winter, it’s getting colder here, forecast says! Winter is one month away!\n","tags":null,"title":"It’s getting colder here!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-21T19:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/21/wanted-more-than-2000-in-google-hiring-spree/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Reuters: Google Inc plans to hire more than 2,000 people around the globe, bumping up its workforce as it expands into new markets and battles for talent with faster-growing rivals.\nThe world’s largest Internet search engine, whose finance chief told investors in September that the Internet industry was waging a “war for talent,” has job openings listed for 2,076 positions on its website, according to a Reuters tally on Thursday.\n","tags":["Google","google job","job","News"],"title":"Wanted: more than 2,000, in Google hiring spree"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-20T22:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/20/something-new-from-aol-project-phoenix/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Take a look in the email I got from AOL:\nHi!\nThere are hundreds of millions of people of all ages using email across the globe today. And because communication is often very personal, we realize a one-size-fits-all solution isn’t always the right answer. So, while we’re proud of the AOL Mail that you know and love today, earlier this week we launched a new email product, code named: Project Phoenix.\n","tags":["Announcement","AOL","Beta","Email"],"title":"Something new from AOL: Project Phoenix"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-19T18:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/19/whats-new-with-autoit-in-2010/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"AutoIt has had a steady year. It is still the same small, practical Windows automation language, but the recent v3.3.6.x updates make it a little nicer for real work: better file handling, better Unicode support, more control over Windows controls, and useful fixes for 64-bit systems.\nIf you already use AutoIt for installers, log collection, desktop shortcuts, or help desk tools, this is not a dramatic rewrite. It is more like a maintenance release that removes a few daily annoyances.\n","tags":["AutoIt","Windows","Automation","Scripting","Productivity"],"title":"What's New with AutoIt in 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-19T17:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/19/virustotal-google-chrome-browser-extension-a-k-a-vtchromizer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" VirusTotal has just coded a Google Chrome browser extension to interact with VirusTotal. The extension adds an option to the context menu to analyze links with VirusTotal’s URL analysis engine.\nUnlike the VTzilla Firefox extension, it does not embed an additional “Scan with VirusTotal” option in the browser’s file download dialog (mainly because Chrome’s API does not allow to do so). Having said this, it does include a top menu bar popup that enables quick VirusTotal searches and direct submission of the page being viewed to VirusTotal.\n","tags":["suggestion","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"VirusTotal Google Chrome browser extension a.k.a. VTchromizer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-19T16:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/19/adobe-reader-x-is-now-available/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe Reader X is now available! Download Reader X for desktop at http://get.adobe.com/reader/ or access the mobile app on the Android Market via your Android device.\nWith over one billion downloads, Adobe Reader continues its leadership as the global standard in PDF viewing and interaction.\nReader X for desktop enables an even greater level of interaction with the ability to share feedback through the use of Sticky Notes and Highlighter tools, as well as view a larger variety of content types including drawings, email messages, spreadsheets, videos, and other multimedia elements. You can also take advantage of the added security of Protected Mode in Reader X, which helps ensure safer viewing of PDF files.\n","tags":["Adobe","software","Updates"],"title":"Adobe Reader X is now available!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-19T14:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/19/myspace-deal-looks-to-facebook-to-gain-and-retain-users/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" BBC: The once dominant MySpace has turned to the company that stole its crown, Facebook, for help to drive users to its ailing site.\nThe two launched Mashup with Facebook, to let MySpace users log in to their Facebook accounts through their MySpace page.\nThis means users can port over their likes and interests listed on Facebook.\nIn turn users will get a stream of entertainment content based on these preferences.\n","tags":["Facebook","MySpace","News","report","Social Media"],"title":"MySpace deal looks to Facebook to gain and retain users"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-11-18T22:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/18/now-this-is-it/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hi Folks!\nNow this the blog I’ve been talking about, my own corner, some where I can write what’s in my mind, staying away from technology and share my life.\nSee you soon!\n","tags":null,"title":"Now this is it!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T21:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/google-docs-editing-comes-to-android-and-ios/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Native Google Docs support has finally arrived for Android and iOS (the mobile version of Google Docs has been available for over three years). Edits show up in near real-time (so they aren’t completely seamless) and Android even lets you insert text using voice recognition.\nThe biggest improvement is the new layout, which makes mobile document editing much easier and allows for collaboration from other Docs users. Currently, Google Docs supports devices with Android 2.2 (codename Froyo) and up, as well as Apple devices with iOS version 3.0 or newer. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t specify if third-party browsers will work with the new Google Docs or whether it plans on adding new platforms such as Windows Phone and webOS.\n","tags":["Android","Google","Google Docs","iOS","News"],"title":"Google Docs editing comes to Android and iOS"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T21:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/naked-scanners-fooled-by-creased-clothing/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Controversial “naked” body scanners currently being tested at Hamburg’s airport are constantly malfunctioning due to folds in passengers’ clothing, broadcaster NDR reported on Tuesday.\nThe public radio station said the trial of the body imaging security scanners has been plagued by serious problems. The units, which have been in use since September, are apparently unable to tell the difference between foreign objects and such things like pleated clothing.\n","tags":["News","technology"],"title":"‘Naked' scanners fooled by creased clothing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T21:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/microsoft-google-is-a-hard-habit-to-break/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft says Google is a bad habit, and it’s hard for people to break it in order to try alternatives, such as the company’s search engine, Bing. “It’s a hard thing. Habits die hard,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Senior Vice President of Online Audience Business, said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, according to PC World.\nMehdi is referring to users’ tendency to use Google for online searches without a second thought. It’s almost second nature to them. Many people even head to Google as their first webpage when they’re testing to see if they have an Internet connection.\n","tags":["Google","Microsoft","News","report"],"title":"Microsoft: Google is a hard habit to break"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T21:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/facebook-takes-on-traditional-e-mail-with-social-inbox/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook has announced a new product that will compete directly with the e-mail services provided by Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and AOL. Facebook believes traditional e-mail is too slow and cumbersome; it needs be brought into the modern world of messaging. The site has thus launched Facebook Messages, which merges texts, online chats, and e-mails into one central hub. Users see all of them in their Social Inbox and can reply in any way they want. The social networking giant says this product is the biggest it has worked on to date.\n","tags":["Facebook","Email","News","Social Media","Yahoo"],"title":"Facebook takes on traditional e-mail with Social Inbox"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T21:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/the-beatles-are-onboard-but-why-are-there-still-musicians-like-kid-rock-and-acdc-holding-out-on-itunes/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" PC Magazine: The Beatles have finally given iTunes a ticket to ride, allowing their iconic music to be added to Apple’s catalog. But while the Fab Four might be the most notable iTunes holdout, they certainly aren’t the last. A dwindling number of artists are still resistant to joining Apple’s music download service.\nSearches on iTunes for AC/DC, Kid Rock, Tool, Garth Brooks, and Def Leppard will return disappointing results: karaoke and cover tracks, not material from the artists themselves. Reasons for non-compliance with Apple vary.\n","tags":["Apple","itunes","Music","review"],"title":"The Beatles are Onboard But Why are there Still Musicians like Kid Rock and AC/DC holding out on iTunes?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T20:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/facebook-bug-disables-thousands-of-female-user-accounts/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Thousands of female Facebook users had their accounts inexplicably disabled today. They did not violate Facebook’s terms of use but nevertheless, they are seeing messages claiming their accounts are “inauthentic,” according to Me \u0026 Her.\nFacebook has confirmed the issue and is asking users to scan and upload a copy of a valid driver’s license in order to reactivate their accounts. The mass-deactivations are a small percentage of Facebook’s total subscriber base, but the number of users affected is easily in the thousands.\n","tags":["Facebook","report","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook bug disables thousands of female user accounts"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T20:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/yahoo-announces-more-changes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" THE INTERNET SEARCH OUTFIT without a search engine, Yahoo has announced a package of products that it hopes will make it more relevant again.\nAt the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Yahoo showed off a host of products that it claimed would deliver to consumers a more “personally relevant Web experience with new social and local features”.\nYou guessed it, more social networking and more experiences than you can poke a stick at.\n","tags":["News","Twitter","Yahoo","Zynga"],"title":"Yahoo announces more changes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-17T16:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/17/ie9-alleged-to-be-cheating-in-javascript-benchmark/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" We’ve all heard of graphics card makers optimizing their drivers for various benchmarks—some of you might recall the Quack story as one of the earlier examples. I think this might be the first time I’ve heard about the same thing happening in the world of web browsers, though. Believe it or not, Digitizor says a Mozilla engineer has found evidence that Internet Explorer 9 is “cheating” in the popular SunSpider JavaScript benchmark.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","News","report"],"title":"IE9 alleged to be cheating in JavaScript benchmark"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-16T15:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/16/windows-phone-7-outlasts-iphone-android-on-a-bbq/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Todd Bishop, TechFlash: Not sure if this will factor into anyone’s purchasing decisions, but it looks like Windows Phone 7 is the smartphone for you — at least if you have a habit of leaving your smartphone unattended on a flaming grill.\nEZ Grill, a Bellevue-based disposable BBQ company, worked with Seattle-based social media agency Banyan Branch to pit a new HTC Surround, running the Microsoft operating system, against the Android G2 and iPhone 4 in a test of endurance on the grill. As you can see in the video above, Windows Phone won easily.\n","tags":["Android","Interesting","Apple","Video","Windows Phone"],"title":"Windows Phone 7 outlasts iPhone, Android… on a BBQ"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-16T14:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/16/this-posters-shows-how-many-floppies-are/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" This Posters shows, how many floppies are enough for current softwares. Result (Approximate) 46 disk for iTunes 8.02, 358 disk for Adobe Photoshop CS4, 1760 disk for the Sims 3, 12 disk for Firefox 3, See the main story here: http://www.behance.net/gallery/3_5-inch-poster-set/164212\n","tags":["Interesting"],"title":"This Posters shows, how many floppies are…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-13T10:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/13/hidden-second-wi-fi-network-with-the-thomson-twg870u-router/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Righard Zwienenberg from Norman Security Center Blog posted something interesting, Thanks to Mr. Fagerlid for Sharing:\nThere is some commotion in The Netherlands. Telecom/ISP provider UPC is providing its customers with the Thomson TWG870U router, a Docsis 3.0 router. On the tweakers.net forum (Dutch language), a user discovered that the router, which is also providing Wireless Access, has a second hidden wireless network. Problem here is that:\n","tags":["Hardware","report","review","Security","WiFi"],"title":"Hidden second Wi-Fi network with the Thomson TWG870U router"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/nvidia-ceo-upcoming-android-tablets-to-bring-better-graphics-and-multitasking/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: We know that a number of Android tablets are coming in the next couple of months. But will these devices be able to compete with Apple’s iPad, which is currently dominating the market? According to NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, not only the new Android tablets will be competitive, they’ll be better than the iPad in many areas.\nMany of the upcoming tablets will be using NVidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor, which will “give you the benefit of higher performance and much, much better multitasking and better graphics”, Huang said in an interview with Cnet.\n","tags":["Android","Announcement","News","nvidia"],"title":"NVidia CEO: Upcoming Android Tablets to Bring Better Graphics and Multitasking"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/mozilla-releases-beta-7-of-firefox-4-claims-3-5x-performance-boost/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"BetaNews: Mozilla Wednesday released a significant update to the beta of its Firefox 4 browser. The update adds a new JavaScript JIT compiler, going by the name of JägerMonkey, and improves the browser’s support for hardware acceleration, OpenType fonts, and WebGL 3D graphics (the technology used to create an HTML5 version of Quake II back in April.)\nAdditionally, the latest beta includes a stable add-ons API, so developers can finally update their add-ons to Firefox 4.\n","tags":["3D","Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Mozilla","News","Updates"],"title":"Mozilla releases beta 7 of Firefox 4, claims 3-5x performance boost"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/google-cleans-up-messy-data-with-refine/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: If you live for data, slave over spreadsheets and constantly find yourself sifting through endless rows and columns of facts and figures, Google’s got a lovely new product just for you — and it’s free and open-source, too.\nGoogle Refine is a project born of Freebase Gridworks, a data-cleaning tool Google acquired when it bought Metaweb during the summer. Google has since renamed Gridworks and relaunched it as Refine.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google"],"title":"Google Cleans Up Messy Data with Refine"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/itunes-store-links-up-with-twitter-via-ping/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" BetaNews: Ping, the social music service introduced as a part of iTunes 10 in September, can now be linked with Twitter, the popular micro blogging service announced Thursday.\nStarting today, Ping users can connect their iTunes Ping account to their Twitter account and share their listening activity in their Twitter feed. Tweets sent from Ping include the album and artist information, album cover, song preview, and a link to the iTunes store to buy the music mentioned.\n","tags":["itunes","News","ping","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"iTunes Store links up with Twitter via Ping"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/facebook-to-spend-nearly-half-a-billion-dollars-on-new-data-center/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Facebook’s running out of servers to handle its 500+ million users, so it has decided to build a new data center in North Carolina that will cost a whopping $450 million to complete.\nThe announcement was made by North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, who said that the facility will take 18 months to complete and will employ 35 to 45 workers to operate (not including the 250 jobs that will be created during its construction). It is being built in Rutherford County, which is to the west of Charlotte.\n","tags":["Facebook","News"],"title":"Facebook to Spend Nearly Half a Billion Dollars on New Data Center"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/say-hello-to-the-samsung-nexus-s/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: If you didn’t think the Nexus S was real, perhaps these pictures of the purported device will convince you otherwise.\nKudos to Engadget, which was the first publication to get pictures of the mythical successor to the Nexus One. As we reported earlier today, the device is built by Samsung and has a lot of similarities to the Galaxy S Android phone.\nAccording to multiple reports, the Nexus S runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3), sports a 4-inch AMOLED screen, sports a curved back, hosts a front-facing camera and will be available on T-Mobile. It’s expected to be announced at the same time as Google’s official Gingerbread announcement.\n","tags":["Google","Mobile","nexus s"],"title":"Say Hello to the Samsung Nexus S"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T13:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/more-than-100-security-fixes-in-mac-os-x-10-6-5/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Apple has issued the latest update to its Mac OS X operating system, bringing Snow Leopard users up to Mac OS X 10.6.5.\nEnhancements include improved Microsoft Exchange reliability, and a variety of performance and stability improvements. But what’s probably most interesting to you is that the update also includes important security fixes.\nWell over 100 different vulnerabilities are reportedly patched by Mac OS X 10.6.5 – if you want to see the gory details (or at least, those details which Apple is prepared to make public) view their knowledgebase article.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Security","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"More than 100 security fixes in Mac OS X 10.6.5"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T11:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/female-hacker-charged-with-stealing-nude-photos-of-grady-sizemore/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" In 2009, naked photographs of American baseball star Grady Sizemore circulated on the internet after being stolen from the email account of his then girlfriend, Playboy Playmate Brittany Binger.\nA total of 15 photos were circulated – some showing Sizemore posing in his bathroom mirror wearing a suit, but others that showed him nude or only partially clothed. In one of the pictures, still easily available on the web, the Cleveland Indians’ star is using a coffee mug to protect his err.. modesty.\n","tags":["Brittany Binger","Grady Sizemore","hack","Password","PlayBoy","Security"],"title":"Female hacker charged with stealing nude photos of Grady Sizemore"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-12T09:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/12/google-now-enhancing-swf-indexing/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" This is amazing news indeed. Its has been feature talk with many of clients and colleagues all long for many years.\nCurrently almost any text a user can see as they interact with a SWF file on your site can be indexed by Googlebot and used to generate a snippet or match query terms in Google searches. Additionally, Googlebot can also discover URLs in SWF files and follow those links, so if your SWF content contains links to pages inside your website, Google may be able to crawl and index those pages as well.\n","tags":["Flash","Google","Search"],"title":"Google Now, Enhancing SWF Indexing..!!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-10T16:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/10/facebook-brand-pages-hit-by-malicious-links/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"CNet: The latest security fiasco on Facebook’s application platform may involve business pages rather than personal accounts: Sendible, a company that makes software for businesses to manage accounts and presences on various social-media services, looked like it was hit by a virus or hacker on Tuesday afternoon: TechCrunch pointed out that Sendible-managed brand pages on Facebook appeared to be posting malicious links.\nNow Sendible’s claiming it wasn’t their fault. “Just to clarify, Sendible was not hacked,” the company posted to its Twitter account. “One of our users has discovered a major flaw in Facebook’s security.” Sendible’s Twitter account then quoted the user in question, who said, “i wanted to post only on a few Facebook walls as a fan – and for some reason, posted as the page Owner. weird,” and Sendible added “This appears to be a bug in Facebook’s API as the posts should have been displayed as the user profile and not the page owner.”\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","News"],"title":"Facebook brand pages hit by malicious links"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-10T15:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/10/hotmail-always-on-encryption-breaks-microsofts-own-apps/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Oh look, Microsoft is late to the party again? They are finally launching full-session SSL encryption to Hotmail a mere 2 years after Google did the same thing for Gmail.\nIt looks like the release of FireSheep really has had an impact on web-application vendors due to the amount of mainstream media coverage it got and the sheer number of downloads.\nAt least they are doing something and I hope more vendors follow and give users an option to force full-session HTTPS connections for all web properties.\n","tags":["Hotmail","Microsoft","privacy","Security","Windows Live"],"title":"Hotmail Always-On Encryption Breaks Microsoft’s Own Apps"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-10T13:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/10/google-gives-all-employees-surprise-1000-cash-bonus-and-10-raise/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has given all of its employees $1,000 cash “holiday bonuses” and 2011 salary increases of at least 10%, a loyal reader tells us.\nThe 10% company-wide raise will take effect on January 1, 2011.\nIn addition, Google will also give each employee an additional raise equivalent to 1X the employee’s target bonus for the year. And employees will be eligible for additional “merit increases” based on their individual performance.\n","tags":["business","Eric Schmidt","Google","News"],"title":"Google Gives All Employees Surprise $1,000 Cash Bonus And 10% Raise"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-07T15:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/07/firesheep-author-takes-backhanded-pot-shot-at-free-speech/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Sophos Labs: Two weeks ago, an automatic session-hijacking plugin was released for Firefox. It was named Firesheep, and it’s been downloaded over 600,000 times so far.\nThe decision to release Firesheep publicly is a controversial one. On the good side, it’s reminded people that some of their common web surfing habits are dangerously insecure.\nMany websites use HTTPS (secure HTTP) for login, which protects your password. But they revert to insecure HTTP for the rest of the session. After you have logged in, security relies on the browser sending a session cookie – a secret authentication token – in every request.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox Addon","Hijack","privacy","report","Social Media"],"title":"Firesheep author takes backhanded pot-shot at free speech"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-07T11:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/07/google-bars-data-from-facebook-as-rivalry-heats-up/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Reuters: Google Inc will begin blocking Facebook and other Web services from accessing its users’ information, highlighting an intensifying rivalry between the two Internet giants.\nGoogle will no longer let other services automatically import its users’ email contact data for their own purposes, unless the information flows both ways. It accused Facebook in particular of siphoning up Google contact data, without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users’ information.\n","tags":["Facebook","Privacy","Google","News"],"title":"Google bars data from Facebook as rivalry heats up"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T18:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/avast-one-in-eight-malware-infections-via-usb/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" With the expanding amounts of storage available on cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras, and gaming devices it’s no surprise that malware is increasingly being transmitted over USB. avast! Software is reporting that out of 700,000 attacks reported by its Community IQ system in October, one in eight were exchanged over USB connections. “Cyber-criminals are taking advantage of people’s natural inclination to share with their friends and the growing memory capacity of USB devices,” says avast! virus analyst Jan Sirmer.\n","tags":["advice","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"avast!: One in eight malware infections via USB"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T18:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/cable-lost-500000-subscribers-in-q3-thanks-to-the-web/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Last quarter was the first time ever that US pay-for TV subscription rates declined, and in Q3 2010, cable lost over 518,300 subscribers in total, according to GigaOm. Four of the five biggest cable companies lost customers: Comcast had more than half of the losses at 275,000, Time Warner took a 155,000 subscriber hit, Charter Communications lost 63,800, and Cablevision waved goodbye to 24,500 customers. The third largest cable provider, Cox Communications, is privately held and therefore doesn’t have to announce its subscriber numbers publicly. The number is thus likely even bigger if we could include Cox plus all the smaller cable companies.\n","tags":["cable","internet","report","TV"],"title":"Cable lost 500,000+ subscribers in Q3, thanks to the Web"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T18:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/facebooks-zuckerberg-now-richer-than-apples-steve-jobs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Just 5 years after founding Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is worth more than Apple’s iconic chief Steve Jobs.\nThis year, Zuckerberg, 26, added $4.9 billion to his fortune–vaulting to #35 on the Forbes 400 with an estimated fortune of $6.9 billion. Why the jump? Recent private equity investments in Facebook valued the firm at around $23 billion–more than triple its 2009 value of $7 billion. Illiquid private shares in secondary markets point to an even richer valuation.\n","tags":["business","Mark Zuckerberg"],"title":"Facebook’s Zuckerberg Now Richer Than Apple’s Steve Jobs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T18:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/graph-of-when-people-break-up-on-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"David McCandless recently gave a presentation about data visualization in which he unveiled this graph, which tracked 10,000 Facebook status updates to determine precisely when people in relationships broke up.\nThe results look like this:\nNote the huge surges around Spring Break, the beginning of Summer, and two weeks before Christmas, as well as the sharp decline on Christmas Day itself. The majority of the breakups are announced on Mondays (Garfield was right – lasagna is awesome. Non sequitor.) The graph also doesn’t show what happens when someone in a relationship makes a detailed graph about ending relationships, but I’m guessing that’s been an instant breakup one out of one times.\n","tags":["Facebook","report","Social Media"],"title":"Graph Of When People Break Up On Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T17:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/find-words-smarter-with-word-suggestions/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla Labs: In our first Prospector experiment, Speak Words, we helped Firefox learn what words you might want to type into the Awesome Bar. We have taken that idea to help you find words in your open tab in our latest experiment.\nFinding a word in Firefox has always been easy because Firefox will move you to the new word formed by your last keystroke. This means you do not need to type out a word then click a search button to try finding a word that you might have misspelled. Firefox will let you know immediately if the new letter you pressed does not form a word that is on the page.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox Addon","Mozilla","suggestion"],"title":"Find Words Smarter with Word Suggestions"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T16:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/firefox-4-beta-2-now-available-for-android-and-maemo/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Firefox 4 Beta 2 has been released and you can download it in 10 languages on your Android or Maemo device. The new version comes with a wide range of fixes and improvements. The install size of Firefox Beta has been reduced by 60% (from around 43 MB to 17 MB). A new theme has been included in this version, that gives Firefox a fresh new look and the ability to easily share links with your friends from the Site Menu and the ability to undo closing a tab. Checkout the complete change-log below.\n","tags":["Android","Beta","Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Maemo","Mobile","Mobile Browsers"],"title":"Firefox 4 Beta 2 Now Available For Android And Maemo"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T16:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/google-chrome-gets-its-own-pdf-viewer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" For Google Chrome users, viewing PDFs in the browser has been a colossal pain for lo these many moons. That’s why we are (and you should be) thrilled to learn that Google is rolling out a better way to look at PDFs in Chrome.\nFor the time being, Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer will be available through the beta version only. If you’re using the non-beta version of Chrome, you can download the beta to get the PDF-related improvements or enable the PDF viewer by typing about:plugins in address-bar and enable PDF viewer.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","PDF"],"title":"Google Chrome Gets Its Own PDF Viewer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T16:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/google-instant-goes-mobile/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: A beta version of Google Instant is now available on many U.S. iPhone and Android mobile devices.\nAccording to the Google Blog, the Instant search option is presently on Android 2.2 devices, as well as iPhones and iPods running on iOS 4. As of right now, Google Instant is only available in English, although Google plans on adding more languages and bringing the service to other countries and devices.\n","tags":["Android","Google","Mobile","News"],"title":"Google Instant Goes Mobile"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T16:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/google-android-turns-3/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Today marks exactly three years since Google and a slew of hardware and carrier partners officially announced the Android mobile operating system.\nIt was almost a year after that before the first major Android handset was released – the G1 on T-Mobile – and not until late 2009 that the Motorola Droid, complete with an aggressive ad campaign, catapulted the platform into the mainstream consciousness.\nToday, a wide variety of manufacturers are producing Android phones, and they’re sold on all major carriers in the U.S. In fact, in aggregate they’re now outselling those running on Apple’s iOS, with recent numbers putting Google’s share of the mobile operating system market at nearly 20%.\n","tags":["Android","Google","report"],"title":"Google Android Turns 3"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T16:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/wordpress-adds-feature-for-embedding-tweets/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Months ago, Twitter released a clunky tool called Blackbird Pie for embedding tweets in blog posts. Today WordPress has radically simplified and improved tweet embedding with a new feature, also named Twitter Blackbird Pie.\nBeginning today, WordPress.com users simply need to copy a tweet’s URL and paste it on a line by itself to embed it in a blog post.\nPasted URLs are converted into full tweets, which means these embedded tweets look as good as screenshots, but include the link back to the tweet, a link to the source and a retweet option. The new feature will also save users time — letting them avoid the much more manual process of snapping screenshots of tweets.\n","tags":["Announcement","News","Twitter","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress Adds Feature for Embedding Tweets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T15:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/its-alive-xmarks-back-from-the-brink/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: It looks like cross-browser, bookmark syncing service Xmarks won’t be going out of business after all.\nJust over a month after announcing that the service would be closing its doors and shutting down operations come January 2011, the company has announced that it is in the final stages of selling Xmarks to a new owner who is focused on keeping the tool running smoothly.\nXmarks announced the news on its official blog, noting that exact details can’t be revealed just yet, but that the service is alive and “things are on track for a ‘new and improved’ Xmarks.”\nThe Xmarks blog says that the Xmarks service will evolve into offering free and premium components. Details about what will be included in the premium offering are promised to come at a later date.\n","tags":["Browsers","News","report","Xmarks"],"title":"It’s Alive: Xmarks Back From the Brink"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T15:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/steve-ballmer-sells-1-3-billion-worth-of-microsoft-shares/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has sold 12% of his stake in the tech giant in a transaction worth over $1.3 billion.\nAccording to a filing with the SEC, Ballmer has sold 49.3 million Microsoft shares over the last three days, bringing his total ownership to 358.9 million shares, or approximately 4.2% of the company. Essentially, he sold 12% of his shares at a price between $26 and $28.\n","tags":["business","Microsoft","News","Steve Ballmer","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Steve Ballmer Sells $1.3 Billion Worth of Microsoft Shares"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T14:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/hotmail-phishing-dumb-but-it-might-works/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Will believe that? I hope you don’t😉\n","tags":["Hotmail","Phishing","Security"],"title":"Hotmail Phishing, Dumb, but it might works"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T14:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/no-prn-for-you-naughty-boy/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"There are always peculiar things malware researchers discover while analyzing new samples.\nVirusTotal 24/43\nLet’s remember the filename as HD Porn TV for later😉\nOur victim runs it thinking they will see the latest porno in HD quality. Instead they get a new browser ‘theme’ with a Turkish flavor:\nInternet Explorer:\nFirefox:\nThe bad guys hijack Winsock:\nAnd filter traffic through:\n","tags":["Hijack","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"No p*rn for you, naughty boy!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T11:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/av-scam-is-it-a-rogue-or-is-it-avgs-free-edition-for-sale/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Tom Kelchner, Sunbelt blog: Alert reader Laurie (my boss actually) forwarded a copy an email she received from a friend. It said the sender was “…pleased to announce the newest version of Antivirus 2010 for Windows.”\nThere was a link to click, of course.\nSomething called “Antivirus 2010” for sale in November is very odd for three reasons:\nIt’s nearly 2011 and legitimate AV companies are putting out their 2011 versions. There was a rogue security product last year called “Antivirus 2010.” (VIPRE detection: FraudTool.Win32.Antivirus2010 (v)) Although a lot of companies make a product named Anti-Virus 2010, they usually put their name in front of it, such as “Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010” or “Norton AntiVirus 2010.” The Antivirus 2010 rogue graphic interface from 2009:\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","report","review","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"AV scam: is it a rogue or is it AVG’s free edition for sale?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T10:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/patchday-ahead/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Redmond company today published its announcement for the upcoming November Patch Tuesday. Microsoft wants to release 3 security bulletins which deal with 11 security vulnerabilities within Office and PowerPoint (up to the brand new Office 2011 for Mac) and Forefront Unified Access Gateway. A patch for the just recently detected 0-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer is not in the list.\nAdobe meanwhile ships an update for the Flash Player to version 10.1.102.64 today and plans one for the Reader and Acrobat next week. The Flash update is available via the Download Center and fixes the“authplay” vulnerability which got public last week. But the company has to deal with a new security vulnerability as well. It’s not yet exploited and it remains currently unknown whether it is exploitable to infect PCs with malware, but Adobe investigates the flaw. On a public security list a so-called Proof-of-Concept (PoC) has been published which just shows a Denial-of-Service attack.\n","tags":["0-Day","Adobe","Flash","flash player","Google","Google Chrome","Microsoft","Updates","Windows"],"title":"Patchday ahead"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-06T09:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/06/google-chromes-version-number-is-meaningless/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Operation System blog:\nGoogle Chrome is the first browser that has a meaningless version number. Since Chrome is automatically updated, most people use the latest version of the software a few days after it’s released.\nGoogle’s help articles aren’t the only ones that ignore Chrome’s version number. Yahoo has recently released a report that recommends developers to assume that Chrome users are running the latest version.\n“Chrome has been progressing rapidly through versions, and Google has communicated its intent to continue rapid development and short release cycles. As a result, we’ve modified our strategy for Chrome to advise testing on the latest [generally available] release of Chrome as soon as it is issued, with prior versions moving to X-grade as soon as they are superseded.”\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","report","Updates","Yahoo"],"title":"Google Chrome's Version Number Is Meaningless"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-05T13:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/05/microsoft-tempts-antitrust-lawyers-with-expanded-antivirus-offering/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report posted something interesting in ZDNet:\nYou want a good, solid, free antivirus program? Microsoft Security Essentials fills the bill nicely. Unfortunately, even though it was officially released more than a year ago, it’s still one of the best-kept secrets in personal computing. Its installed base of 30 million users worldwide might sound big in raw numbers, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billion-plus Windows PCs in use.\n","tags":["mcafee","Microsoft","norton","Security","Security Essentials","symantec","Updates"],"title":"Microsoft tempts antitrust lawyers with expanded antivirus offering"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T22:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/microsoft-smart-screen-false-positives/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" SANS.edu: We received a couple of reports about Microsoft’s “Smart Screen” flagging harmless sites as malicious. Initially, we considered the possibility of an infected ad service. But it may be a bug in Smartfilter as well. Some reports on twitter show that the problem has been resolved.\nPlease let us know if you have sample URLs that are still affected.\nTo disable smart screen: Select “Internet Options” from the “Tools” menu. Select the “Advanced” tab and find the “Enable SmartScreen Filter” setting (about the 10th item from the bottom. Scroll all the way down). Needless to say: This will also remove the smart screen protection from real-evil sites, not just from appear-to-be-evil-to-smartscreen-today sites. The setting should only be changed if you can’t wait for the problem to be fixed.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","report","SmartScreen"],"title":"Microsoft Smart Screen False Positives"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T21:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/webcam-cyber-sextortionist-preyed-on-over-200-women/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"A perverted hacker who spied upon more than 200 women via their webcams and microphones, after infecting their computers with malware, was arrested earlier this year by the FBI after a two year investigation.\nThe 31-year-old man broke into victims’ personal computers, and stole personal information. Threatening to share the private information with their parents and email contacts, the man pressured the young women (some of them still young teenagers) into providing him with risqué pictures and videos.\n","tags":["FBI","hack","News","report","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Webcam cyber-sextortionist preyed on over 200 women"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T19:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/workaround-for-vulnerability-affecting-internet-explorer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft has released a security advisory concerning a vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8. This vulnerability may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Full details here.\nVisit Microsoft’s page here to get full instructions. You can find the workarounds under the “Suggested Actions” twisty.\nThe workarounds include overriding the Web site CSS with a user-defined style sheet, deploying the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP) for Internet Explorer 7 and setting Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to “High” to block ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones.\n","tags":["advice","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Workaround for vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T17:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/android-overtakes-iphone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Wall Street Journal: It looks like Steve Jobs may have something to be nervous about after all.\nGoogle Inc.’s Android platform has taken the lead in the U.S. smartphone market, according to several new reports by technology research firms.\nIn the third quarter, devices with the Android operating system were installed in 44% of smartphones, while Apple Inc.’s iPhone came in second place with 23%, according to market research firm, NPD Group. RIM’s BlackBerry trailed behind in third place with 22%. One big caveat: NPD tracks consumer activity, but doesn’t measure corporate cellphone purchases.\n","tags":["Android","Apple","Google","Mobile","report","review"],"title":"Android Overtakes iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T17:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/with-the-jack-pc-the-computers-in-the-wall/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Jack PC from Chip PC Technologies offers a neat and novel thin-client desktop computing solution where the computer doesn’t just plug into the wall, it is the plug in the wall. Running on power provided by the Ethernet cable that also connects it to the data center server, the computer-in-a-wall-socket supports wireless connectivity, has dual display capabilities and runs on the RISC processor architecture – which gives the solution the equivalent of 1.2GHz of x86 processing power… Continue Reading With the Jack PC, the computer’s in the wall!\n","tags":["Hardware","Interesting","link","technology"],"title":"With the Jack PC, the computer's in the wall!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T13:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/goo-gl-is-the-fastest-and-most-reliable-url-shortening-service/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" There are a lot of URL shortening services out there, but Pingdom has worked out which is the fastest. Reliability and performance is key for URL shortening services and Goo.gl is on top!\nAs you can see from the above chart Goo.gl has the fastest service in all locations. Additionally, it was reported that they have a 100% uptime. So if you have already checked out the Goo.gl service then make sure you take a look.\n","tags":["Google","report","review","Benchmark"],"title":"Goo.gl is the Fastest and Most Reliable URL Shortening Service"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-04T00:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/04/facebooks-smaller-font-size-straining-eyes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" (CNN) — Facebook is the biggest name in social networking. But overnight, it got smaller.\nThe font size on much of the site appears to have shrunk — a tweak that has folks complaining about their poor, News Feed-browsing eyes.\nBy Wednesday morning, users had taken to Twitter to sound off on the change, mostly for the negative.\n“Eye doctors everywhere must love the smaller default font on Facebook this morning. Eyes squinting everywhere!” wrote Twitter user esilverstein.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","report"],"title":"Facebook's smaller font size straining eyes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T23:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-tdp-is-244w-includes-128-tmu-benchmarks-leaked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Chinese website eNet has filled in some missing information – notably TDP and TMU count. The TDP of GeForce GTX 580 is at 244W, slightly lower than the GeForce GTX 480. The texture fillrate had been viewed by many as one of the bottlenecks for GF100, and eNet reports that GF110 effectively doubles the TMU count to 128 TMUs. Apart from this substantial improvement in TMU, the GF110 is a “full revision” and fixed version of GF100.\n","tags":["3D","AMD","ATI","Hardware","nvidia","report","review"],"title":"NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 TDP is 244W, includes 128 TMU, Benchmarks Leaked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T23:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/facebook-is-fastest-social-network-twitter-myspace-slowest/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"On average, response times and availability of five major social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace) has improved this past quarter, according to Web analytics company AlertSite. This is great news given that all of them (save for possibly MySpace) have a quickly growing number of users.\nDespite a few outages, however, Facebook is still the fastest social network in terms of average response time. In the most recent third quarter (July 1 to September 30), Facebook shaved 0.02 seconds off its second quarter average response time, down to 1.00 seconds. Twitter and Myspace came in the last two spots with average response times of 2.93 seconds and 3.61 seconds, respectively. That being said, Twitter’s performance improved the most over the last quarter among the social networks studied: more than 35 percent.\n","tags":["Facebook","LinkedIn","MySpace","report","Social Media","Twitter","YouTube"],"title":"Facebook is fastest social network; Twitter, MySpace slowest"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T22:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/microsoft-allows-checking-gmail-through-hotmail/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft’s Hotmail rolled out its new service that allows streaming mail from other vendors like Gmail and Yahoo, in an attempt to make Hotmail the primary destination for email management rather than just a repository of spams.\nThe new service is a feature that is borrowed from Microsoft Outlook that allows adding accounts from other email services.\nDick Craddock, Group Program Manager at Windows Live Hotmail, said in a blog post: “We understand. You already have at least one email address and you probably don’t need another. You may also use your existing address for things other than just email, such as signing in to online shopping sites, which makes changing even more challenging. Also, you might have an address that you really like, but a similar name might not be available on another email service. “\n","tags":["Gmail","Hotmail","Microsoft","Windows Live","Yahoo"],"title":"Microsoft allows checking Gmail through Hotmail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T22:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/sophos-malware-on-the-mac-is-real-heres-a-free-antivirus/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Sophos has released a free antivirus product for consumers using Mac OS: Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition for Mac. Although commercial antivirus products for Macs have been available for some time, Sophos’ offer is one of the very few free ones.\nThe Internet security firm took its existing enterprise antivirus software and slimmed it down to reduce complexity. Interestingly, the company has no plans to release an equivalent free version for Windows. Windows threats are in the millions while the number of strains of Mac malware is in the thousands.\n","tags":["antivirus","Mac OS X","Malware","sophos","Security"],"title":"Sophos: malware on the Mac is real, here's a free antivirus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T21:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/google-docs-to-get-cloud-printing-device-sync/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google Docs may soon be getting an update that will help it better compete against Microsoft’s latest cloud based Office product and make its upcoming Chrome OS a whole lot more useful. Top among the new features is cloud printing, which will let you print documents — whether web-based, on a mobile device or desktop — to any Internet-connected printer anywhere in the world.\nThe cloud printing service was announced a few months ago as part of its web-centric operating system’s capabilities, so the update to Docs makes sense if Google wants to make Chrome OS + Docs a better rival to Microsoft’s Windows and Office, for example. Basically Google is doing away with the need of locally stored drivers by keeping them on their servers and simply sending the print job to the appropriate printer.\n","tags":["Cloud","Google","google chrome os","Google Docs"],"title":"Google Docs to get cloud printing, device sync"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T21:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/marissa-mayer-admits-to-three-of-googles-biggest-mistakes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Geographic and Local Services, joined in 1999 as the company’s 20th employee. During a recent 22-minute interview on Digg Dialogg, Mayer was asked “What do you think Google’s biggest mistake has been during your presence there?” Mayer’s answer pertained to three products: Wave, Dejanews.com, and Gmail.\n“Wave. Certainly there are things we’ve learnt from that, certain things we would have done differently,” Mayer said without any hesitation (this one we’re not really too surprised about). “Shutting down Dejanews.com at 11am on a Monday morning, and not having anywhere to post to or browse usergroups was perhaps a mistake,” she also admitted (Dejanews was a discussion group website on the Usenet network which Google shutdown and silently archived to its Google Groups service). “Launching Gmail on April Fools day was widely misinterpreted,” she added as a final thought (Google often “launches” ridiculous products on April Fools, so many thought Gmail was a joke until they realized it was still around the next day).\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","Google TV","Marissa Mayer","Video"],"title":"Marissa Mayer admits to three of Google's biggest mistakes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T20:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/intel-core-i3-2100t-details-leak/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Details of Intel’s upcoming Sandy Bridge-based i3 processors have leaked out, and there’s one particular model that has caught people’s interest: it features a tiny TDP.\nSpecifications for the Core i3 2100T chip were obtained by Fudzilla from an unnamed source, and reveal an interesting chip for Intel’s lower-end range: featuring two 2.5GHz processing cores and HyperThreading support for up to four simultaneous threads, the Core i3 2100T also packs a beefy 3MB of shared cache.\n","tags":["Core i3","Hardware","intel","leak"],"title":"Intel Core i3 2100T details leak"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T19:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/announcing-the-release-of-fedora-14/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Jared Smith: It’s here! It’s here! It’s really here! Fedora 14 has been officially released! Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release approximately every six months.\nFedora 14, codename Laughlin, is now available for download. Join us and share the joy of free software and the community with friends and family.\n","tags":["Announcement","Fedora","Linux","RedHat","Unix"],"title":"Announcing the release of Fedora 14"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T17:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/an-android-keyboard-that-uses-google-scribe/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Scribe may not seem very useful, but it’s one of the features that could significantly improve virtual keyboards from mobile phones. Instead of showing suggestions from a dictionary, Google Scribe can provide contextually-relevant suggestions.\nScrybe is a free Android keyboard that uses Google Scribe to generate suggestions. It’s not developed by Google and it uses an unofficial Google Scribe API, but it’s an interesting application.\n","tags":["Android","Google"],"title":"An Android Keyboard that Uses Google Scribe"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-03T17:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/03/service-pack-1-for-avira-antivir-products/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Avira started shipping the Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Avira AntiVir 10 yesterday! This Service Pack fixes plenty of minor bugs we found in version 10 and thus makes AntiVir 10 more stable. Also, the developers added some optimizations to improve the speed a little. After installing SP1, all currently known issues should be gone.\nSince yesterday at 11:30 O’clock a product update is available for AntiVir Personal Free, Premium and Premium Security Suite in English and German over the automatic update.\n","tags":["Avira","software","Updates"],"title":"Service Pack 1 for Avira AntiVir Products"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-02T23:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/02/important-information-about-google-buzz-class-action-settlement/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Let’s take a look in the Email I got from Google right now:\nGoogle rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we’ve reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.\nShortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.\n","tags":["Google","privacy","Settlement"],"title":"Important Information about Google Buzz Class Action Settlement"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-02T11:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/02/browser-market-share-october-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Browser Total Market Share Microsoft Internet Explorer 59.26% Firefox 22.82% Chrome 8.47% Safari 5.33% Opera 2.28% Opera Mini 0.95% Netscape 0.63% Konqueror 0.06% Flock 0.05% ACCESS NetFront 0.05% Playstation 0.03% Mozilla 0.03% Obigo 0.01% Danger Web Browser 0.00% Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer 0.00% Blazer 0.00% WebTV 0.00% BlackBerry 0.00% ANT Galio 0.00% Lotus Notes 0.00% iCab 0.00% MaxThon 0.00% ","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Google Chrome","internet","Internet Explorer","Opera","report","Safari"],"title":"Browser Market Share: October, 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-01T22:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/01/nokia-c7-firmware-is-updated-to-012-003-v1-06/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Nokia C7 firmware is updated to 012.003 V1.06. The firmware is available for\n059D9B9 : T-Mobile NL NL v1 Silver white 059D188 : 3 UK GB White\\Silver v1 059D7V3 : Country Variant Sweden SE 059D9M6 : Country Variant Sweden SE Frosty Metal_COLOR 059F2S7 : Country Variant Finland FI MAHOGANY_BROWN_V1_COLOR 059F2S5 : Country Variant Finland FI CHARCOAL_BLACK_V1_COLOR 059F320 : Country Variant Bulgaria BG FROSTY METAL V1 059F3R5 : Country Variant Bulgaria BG CHARCOAL BLACK V1_COLOR 059F3Q4 : 3 DK DK Frosty Metal_COLOR 059F191 : 3 DK DK Charcoal Black The update is available via Nokia PC suite or Nokia OVI Suite. And you can also download it via OTA.\n","tags":["firmware","Mobile","Nokia","Updates"],"title":"Nokia C7 firmware is updated to 012.003 V1.06"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-01T22:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/01/microsoft-to-withdraw-silverlight/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" At the latest PDC conference, only a very few mentions of Silverlight were observed. It seems that Microsoft is betting on HTML5 as the future for cross platform development.\nThey even claim that Silverlight is now a Windows Phone development toolkit (read this article from ZDNet).\nSo it is really safe to continue your developments on this platform ? The interest of Microsoft to buying Adobe is now more clear, as I think Adobe will be best positioned for generating HTML5 interfaces, mixing Flex and Dreamweaver experiences.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Silverlight"],"title":"Microsoft to withdraw Silverlight?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-01T21:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/01/new-vulnerability-in-adobe-flash-and-reader/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Avira TechBlog: Adobe warns of a new vulnerability in Flash Player and in Reader. The problem is within authplay.dll and the corresponding .lib in the Unix versions. It allows attackers to inject malicious code like Trojans with specially prepared documents or Flash objects.\nThe company works on a patch which it plans to release on the 9th of November. Until then, deleting the authplay library helps to prevent a successful attack. Flash or Reader will crash then when a file requests the services from authplay, but this is clearly better than having an infected system.\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","Flash","flash player","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"New Vulnerability in Adobe Flash and Reader"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-11-01T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/11/01/google-founders-wanted-to-hire-steve-jobs-as-companys-first-ceo/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered hiring Apple CEO Steve Jobs as the company’s first CEO, according to a new documentary.\nAfter interviewing a dozen unsuitable candidates during Google’s early years, Page and Brin went to meet Jobs, a personal “hero” of theirs. The pair then asked investor John Doerr, “Why can’t he be our CEO?”\nThe anecdote comes from an episode on Page and Brin from the Bloomberg documentary series “Bloomberg Game Changers.” Earlier this month, the Bloomberg series, which looks at “today’s most influential leaders,” aired an episode on Jobs.\n","tags":["Google","Apple"],"title":"Google founders wanted to hire Steve Jobs as company's first CEO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T12:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/security-advisory-for-adobe-flash-player-adobe-reader-and-acrobat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe have published details of a critical vulnerability the following applications.\nAdobe Flash Player 10.1.85.3 and earlier versions\nAdobe Reader 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions\nAdobe Acrobat 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions\nThe vulnerability could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.\nThere are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against Reader and Acrobat 9.x. Adobe is not currently aware of attacks targeting Flash Player.\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Security Advisory for Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T12:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/new-gmail-labs-feature-saves-you-precious-seconds/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Gmail has just added a new “Labs” feature that should save you some time if you’re the type of person that tends to plow through your e-mail inbox in bunches.\nAs the name implies, the new “Auto-advance” option (that can be enabled under “Settings” \u003e “Labs”) lets you automatically move to the previous or next conversation after archiving, deleting or muting an individual e-mail message.\nWhile that might sound like expected behavior, up until today, Gmail simply took you back to your inbox after taking any of those actions, meaning you essentially needed to scroll back down to wherever you were in your attempt at e-mail triage.\n","tags":["Gmail","gmail labs","Google"],"title":"New Gmail Labs Feature Saves You Precious Seconds"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T12:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/facebook-now-tries-to-tell-the-story-between-two-friends/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: Facebook is rolling out a new breed of Pages called Friendship Pages that pull together the public wall posts, comments, photos (based on tags) and events that two friends have in common.\nThe Friendship Pages feature was cooked up by Facebook software engineer Wayne Kao and then brought to life in an internal hackathon event. The Pages are designed to the tell the story of two friends on Facebook through their shared activity.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook Now Tries to Tell the Story Between Two Friends"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T11:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/mozilla-gives-firefox-a-new-add-on-for-audio-and-video-recording/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla Labs has been working hard on browser-based audio and video — not just for playback, but also for recording. Labs’ newest creation, called Rainbow, lets developers access your hardware’s video and audio recording capabilities with a few lines of JavaScript.\nThe files created are all in open-source formats, including Theora, Vorbis and Ogg (support for WebM and other formats are planned in the product’s roadmap). Once media is captured, files can be accessed via the DOM with HTML5 File APIs.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox Addon","Mozilla","multimedia"],"title":"Mozilla Gives Firefox a New Add-On for Audio and Video Recording"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T11:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/3g-mobile-internet-comes-to-mount-everest/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Nepali mobile network operator Ncell has installed the first 3G base station at the summit of Mount Everest, giving visitors, climbers and people living in the Khumbu Valley the ability to make calls and wirelessly connect to the Internet.\nTo test out the new facility, Ncell also made the world’s highest video call at 17,388 feet.\nSo far, visitors of Mount Everest had to depend on satellite phones to make calls, but now they can do so through a standard GSM, 3G-enabled network. “The coverage of the network will reach up to the peak of the Everest,” Ncell Nepal chief Pasi Koistinen said to reporters in Kathmandu on Thursday.\n","tags":["Announcement","Internet","Mobile","News"],"title":"3G Mobile Internet Comes to Mount Everest"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T11:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/google-instants-blacklisted-words/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google search engine’s latest innovation technology that allows users to search for information in real time does not come without its own challenges. For example, how do you prevent children from seeing adult related content while conducting a live search? Howbeit controversial, the solution, it appears, is by restricting a group of search terms so that they do not function with the new instant search feature.\nConsequently, users will not be exposed to viewing pornographic, hate, violent or disturbing results when conducting searches. This means that inasmuch as Google Instant was designed to simplify search and make finding information quicker on Google, no one will see results deemed to be offensive in nature by the Google team, unless they want to. Users will therefore have to hit enter to confirm a search query once Instant search stops delivering new results due to these restrictions.\n","tags":["Google","report"],"title":"Google Instant’s Blacklisted Words"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T11:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/microsoft-office-2011-out-for-mac/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Software Magazine: Microsoft has launched the Apple version of its productivity suite, the Microsoft Office 2011. The package comes with a new version of Microsoft Outlook that has been specially built for Apple’s Mac. The suite supports those cloud based services Windows users have since the launch of Microsoft Office 2010 for this platform.\nThe reason for launching Microsoft Office for a competitor’s operating system is simple: although the platform is completely different, there are lots of Mac users in this “Windows-centric” world that need to use Microsoft Office. There are also a lot of users who, although they use a Mac for every other task, they prefer to use Microsoft Office.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Microsoft","Microsoft Office","News"],"title":"Microsoft Office 2011 out for Mac"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-29T10:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/29/gnome-developers-attack-canonicals-ubuntu-decision/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Many Ubuntu users will undoubtedly have strong opinions on Canonical’s recent proposal to replace the GNOME desktop with Unity in the Ubuntu 11.04 release. But for the programmers behind GNOME, one of the open-source community’s most important projects, the announcement might prove to be even more upsetting. Jon McCann, lead designer for GNOME Shell, recently shared his thoughts on this topic with us–and he was none too charitable in his comments on Canonical. Read on for details.\n","tags":["Canonical","gnome","Linux","News","Ubuntu"],"title":"GNOME Developers Attack Canonical’s Ubuntu Decision"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T20:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/will-googles-online-operating-system-revolutionize-the-computer/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":" FOXNEWS: That big old hard drive in your computer? Google says you don’t need it anymore. The company is also betting you won’t need that Windows, Macintosh or Linux stuff either. No, Google wants you to access, operate, and edit all your files on the Internet.\nTo help with that, the company has developed a lightweight operating system of its own, the first new competition for Windows and Macs in years. It’s called Chrome OS. And it could have a profound effect on the way we work with computers.\n","tags":["Google","review"],"title":"Will Google's Online Operating System Revolutionize the Computer?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/mozilla-delays-firefox-4-until-2011/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Firefox is slipping in its development schedule; Mozilla says it won’t be able to release version 4.0 this year, and will have to delay the final version until early next year. “Completing this work is taking longer than initial estimates indicated as we track down regressions and sources of instability,” the company said in a statement. “As part of our commitment to beta users, we will not ship software before it is ready.”\n","tags":["Beta","Browsers","Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Mozilla"],"title":"Mozilla delays Firefox 4 until 2011"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T15:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/zynga-now-valued-at-5-51-billion-more-than-electronic-arts/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" SharesPost has valued Farmville developer Zynga Game Network at $5.51 billion, according to Business Week. That means it is now estimated to be bigger than console publisher Electronic Arts, which stands at a market cap of $5.16 billion. It still has a long way to go to beat Activision Blizzard, which has a market cap of $13.9 billion.\nWhile making such direct comparisons isn’t completely accurate, nor fair, it gives us a snapshot at how quickly social network gaming is growing. Zynga was founded four years ago and already six of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook belong to it, and it has more than 210 million monthly active users.\n","tags":["business","News","report","Zynga"],"title":"Zynga now valued at $5.51 billion, more than Electronic Arts"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T15:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/adobe-confirms-flash-10-1-coming-to-everything-but-iphone/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"At its MAX conference, Adobe not only announced Air 2.5 for phones, tablets, and TVs but it also confirmed that it would be bringing Flash Player 10.1 to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, HP’s WebOS 2.0, Symbian, MeeGo, and the LiMo platform. Unfortunately, there’s still no timeline for a release on each platform; Adobe is only saying that Flash 10.1 is “expected” to hit each mobile OS.\nThese six platforms will join Android 2.2, which has had Flash since June 2010. The current list of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 certified devices is thus not very long, but if Adobe manages to deliver on what it’s promising, it should grow very rapidly. The news today also means that the iOS is the only major mobile platform that will not support the plug-in: Apple won’t let it touch the iPhone, the iPod touch, or the iPad.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Flash Player"],"title":"Adobe confirms Flash 10.1 coming to everything but iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T15:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/windows-7-sp1-rc-released/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft has announced the launch of the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, the last test version prior to its official release.\nWhile the service pack, which is shared between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, comprises a collection of all the latest bug fixes and security patches to have been released since the launch of the operating system, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc has confirmed that Windows 7 users won’t be getting any new features if they choose to install the update.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Updates","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Server"],"title":"Windows 7 SP1 RC released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T14:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/google-ceo-dont-like-street-view-move/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" In a CNN interview Monday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to questions about what Google knows about people by saying that if people don’t like having their homes photographed for Google Street View for the world to see, they can “just move.”\nThe comment came during an interview on the Parker Spitzer show. “With Street View, we drive by exactly once, so you can just move,” said Schmidt, eliciting uncomfortable laughter from interviewer Kathleen Parker. “The point is, we only do it once. This is not a monitoring situation.”\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google CEO: Don't Like ‘Street View'? Move"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T14:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/steve-jobs-calls-the-new-macbook-air-the-future-of-laptops/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" During a 90-minute presentation on Wednesday at Apple headquarters, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s latest thinner MacBook Air 11-inch and 13-inch models, along with the new operating system. The redesigned Mac notebook combines features from the iPhone and iPad with those of a MacBook. The new MacBook Air features a multi-touch that offers you an iPad/iPhone-like experience. Instead of a hard drive, the new thinner, lighter and expensive Mac laptop uses flash storage. Jobs said that all notebooks will be like this someday and added that the Air is the future of the MacBook and all laptops.\n","tags":["Apple","review"],"title":"Steve Jobs calls the new MacBook Air the future of laptops"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T14:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/russian-government-decides-to-develop-windows-alternative/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Russian government is no longer comfortable being dependent on the Windows operating system, and has thus decided to create its own flavor of Linux for internal use. 150 million rubles (€3.55 million or nearly $4.89 million) has been put aside for the project. That’s a huge amount of money to invest into something that isn’t certain (what if Russia gives up and goes back to using Windows 7?).\n“We will become independent of Windows … but it risks becoming an unthinking implantation of Linux [that was probably supposed to be translated as “implementation”],” Russian deputy and computer expert Ilia Ponomarev told the AFP. Nevertheless, he admitted that it will be difficult to create and implement an operating system secure enough for government use, conceding that “the devil is in the details.” Those details will be hashed out during a December meeting headed by Vice Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.\n","tags":["Linux","Operation System","Windows","worlds news"],"title":"Russian government decides to develop Windows alternative"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T13:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/want-a-free-google-tv-tell-google-youre-a-web-developer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google knows it’s going to have a tough time convincing users to switch to its TV platform. As a result, over the next few weeks, the search giant is handing out 10,000 free Google TV units to developers in hopes of “empowering the developers of the world to make Google TV an even better experience, through websites that have been built with the TV screen in mind.” 3,000 Google TV devices (specifically, Logitech Revues) were already given away to attendees of the Adobe MAX conference.\n","tags":["Google","Google TV","News","promo"],"title":"Want a free Google TV? Tell Google you're a Web developer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-28T13:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/28/new-trojan-virus-attacks-mac-computers-via-social-networking-sites/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"**Mac: Hi PC, I’m not feeling so hot today…\n** PC: Oh, I know ALL about that. I think you have a virus!\nSecurity experts by and large agree that security via obscurity is not a wise model for protecting customers over the long term. That’s exactly the model Apple has employed successfully for some time now. However, its luck finally appears to be running short.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Mac OS X","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"New Trojan Virus Attacks Mac Computers Via Social Networking Sites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T16:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/facebook-credits-to-be-sold-at-walmart-and-best-buy/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: There’s a new stocking stuffer for the social gamer on your holiday shopping list: Facebook Credits.\nAlready available at Target stores, the social networking site is set to offer the credits -– which can be used for in-game purchases in games like FarmVille –- at Walmart and Best Buy too. Walmart will offer $5, $10 and $25 versions of the gift cards, while Best Buy will sell them in denominations of $10, $25 and $50.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook Credits to be Sold at Walmart and Best Buy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T16:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/vlc-media-player-now-available-for-iphone/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" VLC Media Player, an app that lets you watch videos in several formats that aren’t natively supported by the iPhone, has arrived in Apple’s iTunes store.\nThe app originated on the iPad and is now compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and “recent” versions of the iPod touch.\nThe features include quick decoding of “almost every” video format, playback in landscape and portrait mode, as well as deleting files directly from the application (bypassing iTunes). Check out an early video review of the application over at 9to5Mac.\n","tags":["Announcement","Apple","Software"],"title":"VLC Media Player Now Available for iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T15:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/google-finally-upgrades-feedburner/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Believe it or not, Google hasn’t forgotten about Feedburner. The RSS feed service has received an experimental new interface that better matches Google Analytics and looks like it might actually integrate into other Google AdSense and Webmaster tools.\nThe interface doesn’t work for every component of Feedburner — if you need to access feed management or change certain settings, you can continue to use the old interface. The new interface — which is accessible via feedburner.google.com/gfb/ — shows real-time stats for clicks, views and podcast downloads from across your feeds.\nThis is really powerful, especially if you use the Feedburner Socialize service to auto-ping Twitter when you publish a post. This can let you track how users are referred and what RSS clients are being used to access feeds.\n","tags":["FeedBurner","Google","News"],"title":"Google Finally Upgrades Feedburner"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T15:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/google-now-accounts-for-6-4-of-internet-traffic/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Internet is growing fast, but Google is growing even faster. According to online security company Arbor Networks, Google now represents an average 6.4% of all Internet traffic.\nThis is a new record for Google, as it gained more than 1% of all Internet traffic share since January. Now, only one global ISP handles more traffic, and a lot of that traffic is – unsurprisingly – Google’s traffic.\n","tags":["Google","internet","ISP","report"],"title":"Google Now Accounts for 6.4% of Internet Traffic"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T15:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/web-filtering-are-employees-offended/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Paul Mah, on the ITBusiness Edge blog, reported on GFI’s September survey of web filtering practices in small and medium businesses and got some interesting feedback from readers.\nWeb filtering is put in place primarily to improve network security, but another big reason is to stop the loss of productivity, he said. Employees however can be offended by the implied lack of trust.\nOne of Mah’s readers said he dutifully “practices self-censorship to enhance personal productivity.” Another, however, asked: “What makes you think your employees are productive now? A slacker will always find a way to slack around.”\n","tags":["internet","report","SME"],"title":"Web filtering: are employees offended?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T14:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/firesheep-who-is-eating-my-cookies/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Internet is great, and everyday millions of people spend their day surfing it, using Google, Gmail, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Some people buy at ebay, or Amazon. Even some people use it to work, though these cases maybe not that common😉\nAs a reader of this blog, you are concerned about security and therefore you already know that connecting through public WiFi is a risky sport. But it is also really convenient, how many of you have done it in McDonalds,Starbucks, etc.? Yeah, me too😮\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox Addon","Offer","privacy","Security","WiFi"],"title":"Firesheep: who is eating my cookies?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-26T12:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/26/when-technology-fails/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I love computers and technology in general. Actually, I am an advocate of technology and I try to push high tech solution whenever that makes sense.\nBut, what happens when technology fails?\nWe have seen many movies with various apocalyptical scenarios where one or another technology fails on us: computer systems in nuclear power plants, satellites, ground or air traffic and so on.\nThe picture below were taken by me with the mobile’s phone camera in two airports in Europe.\n","tags":["Interesting","Technology"],"title":"When technology fails"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-25T12:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/25/spam-from-the-advocate/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Currently cyber criminals try to make fast money by spamming out emails in masses in Germany which allegedly stem from an Advocate specialized in copyright. According to the spam mails, the user was downloading copyrighted material. An IP address is in the email to proof that. To not call the attorney to action, the recipient of the mail is offered to send 100 Euros via a payment system called Ukash. Don’t fall for that social engineering, don’t pay!\n","tags":["alert","News","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Spam from the Advocate"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-25T12:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/25/connect-any-wi-fi-device-to-any-other-wi-fi-device-with-wi-fi-direct/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Mashable: The Wi-Fi Alliance is about to drop a wireless connectivity bombshell called Wi-Fi Direct. It will enable device-to-device connections using current Wi-Fi standards. The Wi-Fi Alliance will begin certifying Wi-Fi Direct devices today.\nCommunication between Wi-Fi devices isn’t specifically new. The Nintendo DS, for instance, has had device-to-device Wi-Fi interaction for some time, but the technology is proprietary.\nThe Wi-Fi Alliance differentiates Wi-Fi Direct by certifying the standard, ensuring interoperability. Devices stamped with the Wi-Fi Direct certification don’t need wireless networks, as they essentially become micro-hotspots.\nThis technology will conceivably allow devices like an Eye-Fi memory card to directly beam an image to a wireless printer. Since Wi-Fi Direct is largely software based, many recent devices should be upgradeable.\n","tags":["News","Offer","WiFi"],"title":"Connect Any Wi-Fi Device to Any Other Wi-Fi Device with Wi-Fi Direct"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-25T12:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/25/nokia-n900-pr-1-3-firmware-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Well in time for the MeeGo Conference next month, Nokia has just started the rollout of the all new PR 1.3 firmware (v20.2010.36-2) for the N900. The update is available over the air (OTA) in the UK with other countries expected to follow suit tomorrow. It should also be available via Nokia’s Software Updater in the coming days, but if you can’t wait or want to flash your device to get a fresh start, grab the firmware images from here and get cracking.\n","tags":["Marmo","Mobile","Nokia","Updates"],"title":"Nokia N900 PR 1.3 Firmware Now Available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-25T11:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/25/steve-jobs-ipad-mute-switch-wont-double-as-an-orientation-lock/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mashable: After iOS 4.2, iPad’s screen rotation lock switch, located on the upper-right edge of the device, will become a mute switch, similar to the mute switch on the iPhone.\nAccording to Steve Jobs himself, who answered one of 9to5Mac’s readers in an email, the change is permanent, and – although it’s just a matter of a software tweak – users won’t be able to switch between the two functions.\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"Steve Jobs: iPad Mute Switch Won’t Double as an Orientation Lock"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-24T22:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/24/facebook-exceeds-500000000-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Last night Facebook announced that it had over 500 000 000 users.\nSome facts that have come out of this are that:\n8% of the entire world are on Facebook Metro\nFacebook was valued at $11.5 billion The Telegraph\nMore than 150 million log in through their phone The Guardian\nTaken from TalkWeb\n","tags":["Facebook","News","report","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook exceeds 500,000,000 users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-24T22:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/24/lady-gaga-hits-1-billion-views-on-youtube/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Lady Gaga took to Twitter this morning to announce that her YouTube videos have hit the lofty milestone of 1 billion total views. The musician is the first to reach such a goal, but Justin Bieber is trailing close behind with 962,726,797 total video views.\nSources were predicting this outcome a few weeks ago, with Lady Gaga reaching 1 billion YouTube views around October 20, and Bieber hitting the mark on November 1.\n","tags":["entertainment","Music","News","report"],"title":"Lady Gaga Hits 1 Billion Views on YouTube"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-24T22:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/24/president-obama-signs-ipad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Sylvester Caan dropped us a note to tell us (and show us!) his iPad being signed by US President Barak Obama. Take it away, Sylvester:\nAt a rally in Seattle, WA at the University of Washington, the President used the touchscreen on my iPad to give me his autograph.\nHe looked slightly surprised, but proceeded to use his finger to scribble on the iPad using the Adobe Ideas app.\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"President Obama signs iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-24T21:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/24/microsoft-ceo-next-windows-release-is-riskiest-product-bet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows 7 might be selling like hotcakes but that’s only going to make it even harder for Microsoft to top. When asked about the riskiest product bet that the software giant is currently developing, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer answered “the next release of Windows” without so much as a second of hesitation. Unfortunately, his interviewers don’t ask him for an explanation, so we’ll have to speculate as to why he chose Windows and not something else like Windows Phone, Xbox Kinect, or Bing.\n","tags":["3D","Microsoft","News","report","Steve Ballmer","Video","Windows","Windows 8"],"title":"Microsoft CEO: next Windows release is \"riskiest product bet\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-24T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/24/myspace-moves-against-apps-who-share-user-data/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" New York (CNN) — Social networking site MySpace, while acknowledging it shares profile information with advertisers, said Saturday that it is taking action against app developers who may have violated the website’s terms of use by sharing user data.\nA spokesman for MySpace who refused to be named told CNN that it shares information with advertisers, but that it does not identify a user. Although MySpace users are not required to provide an actual name when registering, their user IDs link the public information displayed on their profile, which can sometimes reveal names, addresses and other critical information.\n","tags":["MySpace","News","privacy","Social Media"],"title":"MySpace moves against apps who share user data"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-24T21:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/24/googles-spam-report-extension/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"If you want to improve Google’s results and report spammy web pages, there’s a Chrome extension for you.Google Webspam Report adds a link next to each Google search result and automatically fills the spam report form with information like the URL of the page and your query.\nYou can also use the button from Chrome’s toolbar to report pages. The most interesting feature is the integration with Chrome’s browsing history that lets you select recently visited pages and recent Google searches.\n","tags":["Extension","Google","Google Chrome","Search","spam","Security"],"title":"Google's Spam Report Extension"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-23T12:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/23/windows-xp-no-longer-allowed-on-pcs-windows-7-turns-one/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Today is a very important day for Microsoft: it’s the first day that Windows XP can no longer be bundled on new PCs and it’s also the first anniversary of the release of Windows 7. Either Microsoft planned for these dates to coincide, or we just have a big coincidence on our hands.\nDue to Vista’s performance issues on cheap netbooks, Microsoft had to extend the Windows XP installation deadline for its OEM partners. Back in 2008, Microsoft told OEMs that October 22, 2010 would be the last day they could sell computers that come with Windows XP.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Windows","Windows 7","Windows XP"],"title":"Windows XP no longer allowed on PCs, Windows 7 turns one"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T22:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/reuters-google-says-its-cars-grabbed-email-and-passwords/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" (Reuters) – Google Inc said its “Street View” cars around the world accidentally collected more personal data than previously disclosed, and that it was changing its privacy practices.\nRegulators in some of the more than 30 countries where the cars operated are looking into the issue.\nGoogle’s Street View cars, which are well known for crisscrossing the globe and taking panoramic pictures of the city’s streets, collected the data. The company displays the pictures in its online street maps.\n","tags":["Google","News","privacy","StreetView","WiFi"],"title":"Reuters: Google says its cars grabbed email and passwords"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T21:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/desktop-linux-the-dream-is-dead/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The author of this article seems to think Linux in the desktop is dead, with so many missed opportunities, especially during the failure of Windows Vista, they will never break into the market now that Win 7 is so successful.\nIn some ways I agree, but personally, I never thought Linux even had a chance with the average user on a home system. Being in IT, like most peeps in my field, I have become the “help desk” for family and friends; I really do not think the average user is ready for it. Add in the lack of applications and games that are available, it really did not stand a chance. I design and write software, the development costs these days are huge, and the money peeps want a good ROI to out weigh the risks, developing from scratch or even porting an existing app is just too risky.\n","tags":["Apple","Linux","Microsoft","Operation System","review","Unix","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Vista"],"title":"Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T21:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/western-digital-caviar-green-3tb-hard-drive/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Rules were made to be broken; that whole 55 MPH thing happens to be my favorite. Western Digital had larger aspirations; the kinds that considered milestones. Reaching the 750GB per platter mark is definitely in the milestone category and that is what Western Digital is releasing today.\nOn the surface 750GB per platter doesn’t really sound all that impressive unless you are really into the whole storage technology scene. Those on the outside will be more excited to hear about the milestone this way; 3TB hard drives that upon launch cost just a little over 200 USD. Do I have your attention now?\n","tags":["Announcement","Hardware","News"],"title":"Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB Hard Drive"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T21:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/apple-to-remove-java-from-mac-os-x/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" After the news that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Flash pre-installed (which is news considering Flash has been part of Mac OS X for a very long time), we now have news that Apple is also taking what appears to be the first steps towards removing Apple’s own Java runtime from Mac OS X.\nThe wording is a tiny little bit ambiguous, but it would seem like Apple is preparing to ditch Java as a standard part of Mac OS X. In the ‘new and noteworthy’ section of the release notes for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, they note the deprecation of Java.\n","tags":["Apple","Java","News"],"title":"Apple To Remove Java from Mac OS X?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T21:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/windows-7-year-one-240-million-licenses-sold/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows 7 turns one year old and obviously Microsoft felt the need to once again brag with the performance of its latest operating system. And it can really brag as Windows 7 has sold 240 million licenses to date and is, hands down, the fastest selling OS in history.\nIn September no less than 93% of all consumer PCs come pre-loaded with Windows 7, while on October 1st the OS’ global market share was measured at 17%, putting it on second place behind the immortal Windows XP.\n","tags":["Microsoft","report","Windows","Windows 7"],"title":"Windows 7 year one – 240 million licenses sold"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T21:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/domain-name-sex-com-sells-for-13-million/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Escom LLC has sold the controversial domain name Sex.com for $13 million, according to The Register. Documents filed in a California court say that the domain was sold to Clover Holdings, a stealthy offshore firm, after winning an auction that included eleven other bidders. Domain name broker Sedo was the exclusive brokerage firm representing the domain, and it will likely take a nice percent of the sale price, although the actual figures are unknown.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Domain name Sex.com sells for $13 million"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T21:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/12seconds-com-shutdown/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Last mail I got from 12Seconds.com:\nDear 12ers,\nTonight at 8:15PM PST we will shut down 12seconds.tv.\nNo videos can be recorded after 5PM PST.\nIf you have not yet downloaded your videos, go to 12seconds.tv and use the awesome 12seconds video export tool and save your memories. The tool will be available until 5:15 PM PST, so be sure to export your videos before then.\nIs this the last time you will hear from us?\n","tags":["alert","News","Security"],"title":"12Seconds.com shutdown :-("},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T20:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/facebook-touts-encryption-as-solution-to-security-flaw/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Facebook has proposed a solution to a recent security flaw that allowed apps to transmit personal data that involves encrypting the relevant string of numbers, according to a post on its Developer Blog on Thursday. The new set of parameters would allow developers to apply encryption within the next few weeks, preventing data that identifies application users from leaking to places it shouldn’t be.\nFacebook’s security flaw works something like this: when a Facebook user loads a particular kind of application (one that uses iframes) and authorizes the application to access their profile, the URL of the iframe then carries the user’s UID, a number that can link the account to actions on other websites.\n","tags":["Facebook","Privacy","News","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook touts encryption as solution to security flaw"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T20:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/panda-mac-is-less-secure-than-windows-heres-an-antivirus/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Follow up from: Panda security launches Panda Antivirus\nThe number of Mac OS vulnerabilities has quintupled in less than a year. In 2009, 34 vulnerabilities were detected for Mac OS. So far in 2010, this number has risen to 175 vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the platform can also be affected by 170,000 macro viruses for Windows and there are 5,000 classified strains of malware that specifically target Apple systems, according to Panda Security.\n","tags":["antivirus","Apple","Mac OS X","report","review","Windows","Security"],"title":"Panda: Mac is less secure than Windows, here's an antivirus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T20:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/google-news-shows-the-number-of-shared-links/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google News continues to integrate with Twitter and other micro blogging services. After testing a section that shows newsworthy tweets from your subscription, Google started to add to the Google News Onebox the number of times a story has been shared.\nFor example, Google’s Onebox shows that this article about Google TV has been shared by more than 50 Twitter users. Google links to the real-time results for this article, but the page only includes 10 results.\n","tags":["Google","google news"],"title":"Google News Shows the Number of Shared Links"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T20:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/google-docs-adds-drag-and-drop-image-upload/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Docs adds a feature that’s already available in Gmail: you can now upload images using drag and drop. Open a new document and drag an image from your desktop or from a file manager. This feature only works in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari because it requires HTML5’s File API. Unfortunately, you can’t upload multiple images and Google Docs doesn’t show a placeholder image or a progress bar.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","Google Docs"],"title":"Google Docs Adds Drag-and-Drop Image Upload"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T20:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/creating-stronger-privacy-controls-inside-google/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Official Blog: In May we announced that we had mistakenly collected unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars. We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here. So we’ve spent the past several months looking at how to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. Here’s a summary of the changes we’re now making.\n","tags":["Google","Google privacy","News","privacy"],"title":"Creating stronger privacy controls inside Google"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T19:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/zynga-sued-in-privacy-breach-controversy/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"218 million “class members” probably won’t settle for Farmville dollar\nA suit has been filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of a Minnesota woman charging game maker Zynga with leaking the personal information of 218 million Facebook members in violation of federal law. The suit seeks class action status.\nThe action follows by three days an investigative story by The Wall Street Journal that found a large number of Facebook’s apps – including Zynga games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars – leaked the user IDs of Facebook players and their friends to outside companies.\n","tags":["Facebook","Privacy","News","Security"],"title":"Zynga sued in privacy breach controversy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T19:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/defensive-computing/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Windows is an attractive platform for the malware writers, in part, because of the sheer number of users. As Microsoft creep towards making their offerings more secure, applications are increasingly becoming the focus for vulnerability exploitation.\nLike Windows, Adobe products are a default software choice for most users. The bad guys know this and realize that its profitable to scrutinize their applications for exploitable vulnerabilities and create malware to take advantage of the fact.\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","PDF"],"title":"Defensive Computing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T19:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/electronic-car-lock-denial-of-service-attack/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Clever:\nInspector Richard Haycock told local newspapers that the possible use of the car lock jammers would help explain a recent spate of thefts from vehicles that have occurred without leaving any signs of forced entry.\n“We do get quite a lot of car crime in the borough where there’s no sign of a break-in and items have been taken from an owner’s car,” Inspector Haycock said. “It’s difficult to get in to a modern car without causing damage and we get a reasonable amount of people who do not report any.\n","tags":["report","review"],"title":"Electronic Car Lock Denial-of-Service Attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T18:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/use-windows-7-event-viewer-to-track-down-issues-that-cause-slower-boot-times/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, Greg Shultz shows you how to use some of the new features in Windows 7’s Event Viewer to investigate boot time and track down issues that can cause a slowdown in the boot process.\nThis download is available as an entry in the TechRepublic Microsoft Windows Blog.\nCredit to ZDNet.\n","tags":["advice","solution","Windows 7"],"title":"Use Windows 7 Event Viewer to track down issues that cause slower boot times"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-22T00:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/22/chromeless-build-your-own-browser-ui-using-html-css-and-js/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Mozilla Labs: The “Chromeless” project experiments with the idea of removing the current browser user interface and replacing it with a flexible platform which allows for the creation of new browser UI using standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.\nIntroduction Have you ever had an idea to improve the user interface of your browser? Have you ever actually gone and tried to make that idea a reality? If you have, you would have probably used technologies like XUL and XPCOM. Much of the user interface (browser chrome) of Firefox is implemented in XUL, which uses a lot of Web-based technologies such as the DOM and JavaScript. Firefox is put together in a way that seasoned developers are able implement features with amazing efficiency, but at the same time, the browser interface in XUL represents a barrier for potential contributors. What if the parts of the browser that are most interesting to contributors were implemented in standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript? What kinds of wild-eyed experimentation would we see if a new conception of browser UI could be prototyped in about the same time it takes to write a web page?\n","tags":["Announcement","Mozilla"],"title":"Chromeless: Build your own Browser UI using HTML, CSS and JS"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T21:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/pcworld-links-to-scareware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I was reading an article on PCWorld’s website about the upcoming Google Chrome OS:\nSo far so good. Except that I inadvertently clicked on one of their sponsored links:\nwhich ironically states “Here is all about spyware removal and even more.”\nAfter a few redirects, my browser is hijacked by one of those FakeAV scanners:\nHere is the HTTP traffic capture screenshot and log:\n","tags":["advice","Hijack","Malware","report","review","scam","Security"],"title":"PCWorld links to scareware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T21:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/facebook-launches-drag-and-drop-photos-video/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook continues its quest to revamp its popular Photos feature with the launch of the number one most requested feature of them all: drag-and-drop organizing.\nDemonstrated in the video above, drag-and-drop organizing is exactly as it sounds; users can now drag and drop albums and photos into any order they desire.\nToday’s launch follows last month’s upgrade of Facebook Photos, which brought high resolution photo uploads and an in-line photo viewer to the News Feed.\n","tags":["Announcement","Facebook","News"],"title":"Facebook Launches Drag-and-Drop Photos [VIDEO]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T21:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/download-winamp-for-android-beta/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"My favorite music player in old days ‘Winamp’ has now released its official app (currently in Beta) for Android devices. The app is available as a free download to everyone.\nWinamp media player is a nice app for Android. It offers a complete media management solution by seamlessly syncing with the Winamp desktop library. In addition to high quality playback and persistent player controls, Winamp for Android offers wireless desktop sync with your Winamp desktop application.\n","tags":["Android","Download","Offer","Winamp"],"title":"Download Winamp for Android [Beta]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T21:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/google-broadband-gets-its-first-trial/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google’s ultra high speed fiber network — which the company says can offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second — is about to get its first trial outside of the Googleplex.\nThe trial is fairly small and not too far from home; the company will be deploying its network at Stanford University to “a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus. “\nGoogle also points out that this isn’t part of its call for small-to-mid-sized communities to submit proposals to get “Google Fiber” in their towns. That competition sparked an amusing social media battle earlier this year between dozens (if not hundreds) of towns ranging from Topeka, Kansas, to Huntsville, Alabama. Google says that they, “still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year.”\n","tags":["broadband","Google","ISP","News"],"title":"Google Broadband Gets Its First Trial"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T17:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/244000-germans-opt-out-of-google-mapping-service/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" BERLIN — Google on Thursday said 244,000 people in Germany had asked the company to remove images of their houses and apartments from its Street View maps, but that the requests would not derail its plans to activate the service this year.\nThe figure was in line with what German data protection officials had previously estimated. The officials predicted that several hundred thousand people would opt out.\nIn a blog posting on its Web site, Google said 2.9 percent of the 8.5 million households in Germany’s 20 largest cities had opted out of the service.\n","tags":["Google","News","privacy","StreetView"],"title":"244,000 Germans Opt Out of Google Mapping Service"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T17:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/man-cops-to-botnet-fueled-pump-and-dump-scheme/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"An Arizona computer specialist has admitted taking part in a conspiracy that used large networks of compromised computers to inflate the value of stocks so they could later be sold at a profit.\nJames Bragg, 41, of Chandler, Arizona, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and fraud, prosecutors said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. It wasn’t immediately clear when sentencing is to take place.\n","tags":["Malware","report","Security","Yahoo"],"title":"Man cops to botnet-fueled pump-and-dump scheme"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T17:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/facetime-for-mac-os-x-has-a-serious-security-flaw/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A German source is signaling that those who haven’t downloaded FaceTime for Mac just yet may want to hold back on the desire to video chat with their iPhone-wielding friends, as there may be some serious security risks involved.\nDuring yesterday’s Back to the Mac special event held in Cupertino, California, Apple’s CEO confirmed the availability of FaceTime for Mac.\nThe application effectively enables anyone with a mac running Snow Leopard to use their computer’s iSight camera and mic to talk to their iPhone, iPod touch-equipped friends.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","privacy","report","Security"],"title":"FaceTime for Mac OS X Has a Serious Security Flaw"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T15:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/facebook-disconnect-a-chrome-extension-that-puts-facebook-in-its-place/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A new extension, called Facebook Disconnect, blocks contact between your browser and Facebook’s servers when you’re browsing the regular Web. Facebook Disconnect will prevent the sending of data back to Facebook across the one million sites that use the Facebook Connect service.\nRead it at Download Squad\nBefore (Left) – After (Right)\nWhile there are other ways to do this manually, they usually amount to a full block on *.facebook.com/* traffic, whereas this extension still allows normal use of your Facebook account and leaves “like” buttons on websites completely intact for you to continue sharing.\n","tags":["Extension","Facebook","Google Chrome"],"title":"Facebook Disconnect: A Chrome extension that puts Facebook in its place"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T15:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/panda-security-launches-panda-antivirus-for-mac/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Panda Security has announced the launch of Panda Antivirus for Mac. This new solution delivers comprehensive protection against malware affecting Mac OS and Mac OS X; it also prevents Mac users from transmitting malware to other users of Windows and Linux operating systems.\nPanda Antivirus for Mac scans files and email, detecting and eliminating or blocking many types of threats, including viruses, Trojans, spyware, keyloggers, adware, hacking tools, botnets, dialers, scareware and other threats that have traditionally targeted Windows users.\n","tags":["Apple","Mac OS X","Security","software"],"title":"Panda Security Launches Panda Antivirus for Mac"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T14:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/are-you-smarter-than-john/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"How not to manage your passwords…\nJohn, and his unique approach to security is part of an F-Secure Internet Security 2011 campaign.\nYou can find more at besmarterthanjohn.com.\n","tags":["Fun","Interesting","Password","Security","Video"],"title":"Are You Smarter Than John?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T14:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/judge-clears-captcha-breaking-case-for-criminal-trial/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":" A federal judge in New Jersey has cleared the way for a landmark criminal case targeting CAPTCHA circumvention to proceed to trial.\nThe case targets a ring of defendants who used various means to bypass CAPTCHA — the squiggly letters and numbers websites display to prove a visitor is human — in order to automatically purchase thousands of tickets from online vendors and resell them to premium customers.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Judge Clears CAPTCHA-Breaking Case for Criminal Trial"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T14:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/predator-software-pirated/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" This isn’t good:\nIntelligent Integration Systems (IISi), a small Boston-based software development firm, alleges that their Geospatial Toolkit and Extended SQL Toolkit were pirated by Massachusetts-based Netezza for use by a government client. Subsequent evidence and court proceedings revealed that the “government client” seeking assistance with Predator drones was none other than the Central Intelligence Agency.\nIISi is seeking an injunction that would halt the use of their two toolkits by Netezza for three years. Most importantly, IISi alleges in court papers that Netezza used a “hack” version of their software with incomplete targeting functionality in response to rushed CIA deadlines. As a result, Predator drones could be missing their targets by as much as 40 feet.\n","tags":["News","report","Security"],"title":"Predator Software Pirated?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T13:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/malware-pushers-abuse-firefox-warning-page/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" This is a pretty neat attack from the malware pushes leveraging on the ignorance of the average user – which in all honestly is a safe bet most of the time! You could consider it a Social Engineering attack as it’s taking something that’s familiar and changing it to deliver malware.\nI’m sure all the Firefox users reading have at some point or another been faced with the warning screen that tells you a site is not safe to visit, the red page which states in big white letters “Reported Attack Page!”.\n","tags":["alert","Firefox","Malware","scam","Security"],"title":"Malware Pushers Abuse Firefox Warning Page"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T13:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/developers-now-able-to-author-upload-and-share-extensions-for-opera-11-screenshot/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Opera today released the first alpha of Opera 11, the next version of the company’s award-winning desktop web browser. Opera 11 is the first Opera browser to include extensions, browser add-ons made using Opera application programming interfaces (APIs) and web standards like HTML5 and JavaScript. Opera was already the most powerful browser out-of-the-box; now, it adds a new level of customization. Opera 11 alpha is available from http://www.opera.com/browser/next/.\nExtensions allow users to make their web browser their own by adding features and functionality directly into the browser itself, rather than as standalone Opera Widgets or Opera Unite applications. Developers can build extensions with the same web standards they already use to build websites and web applications. Better yet, with only a few tweaks to their code, developers who have already authored a similar extension for other browsers will be able to share their creation with more than 50 million Opera desktop users.\n","tags":["News","Opera","Updates"],"title":"Developers now able to author, upload and share extensions for Opera 11 [Screenshot]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T13:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/firefox-3-6-11-and-3-5-14-security-updates-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Firefox 3.6.11 and Firefox 3.5.14 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.11. The update fixes 40 security and stability bugs, including 5 critical security vulnerabilities.\nFirefox 3.6.11: http://firefox.com\nFirefox 3.5.14: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html\nWe strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","Updates"],"title":"Firefox 3.6.11 and 3.5.14 security updates now available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-21T13:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/21/get-keyboard-shotcuts-to-move-firefox-tabs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A quick and powerful upgrade for your Firefox shortcut mastery: Move Tabs.\nIt’s a simple and useful Firefox extension developed by Jêrome Reybert that allows you to move the current tab to the left, right, the beginnign or the end of the tab bar by simply pressing Ctrl + Shift + PageUp, PageDown,Home and End respectively.\nReally simple. Get Move Tabs at Mozilla Add-ons.\nCredit to ‘Mozilla Links’\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","Tricks"],"title":"Get keyboard shotcuts to move Firefox tabs!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-20T22:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/20/apple-launches-macbook-air-laptop/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Apple is cashing in on the popularity of its iPhone and iPad to boost demand for its oldest product, the Macintosh.\nThe company launched a revamped MacBook Air at an event dubbed “Back to the Mac” at its Cupertino headquarters.\nThe computer is seen as a marriage of what Apple has learned from desktop computing and mobile devices. Like the iPad, the Air will have no hard drive and rely on flash memory.\n","tags":["Apple","News","report"],"title":"Apple launches MacBook Air laptop"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-20T12:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/20/java-surpasses-adobe-kit-as-most-attacked-software/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Researcher sees ‘unprecedented wave of Java exploitation’\nOracle’s Java framework has surpassed Adobe applications as the most attacked software package, according to a Microsoft researcher who warned she was seeing “an unprecedented wave of Java exploitation.”\nThe spike began in the third-quarter of last year and has climbed steadily since, according to data reported on Monday by Holly Stewart, a member of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. By the beginning of this year, the number of Java exploits “had well surpassed the total number of Adobe-related exploits we monitored,” she said.\n","tags":["Adobe","Java","News","Oracle"],"title":"Java surpasses Adobe kit as most attacked software"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-20T12:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/20/google-ditches-all-street-view-wi-fi-scanning/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has no plans to resume using its Street View cars to collect information about the location of Wi-Fi networks, a practice that led to a flurry of privacy probes after the company said it unintentionally captured fragments of unencrypted data.\nThe disclosure appeared in a report on Street View released today by Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, who said that “collection is discontinued and Google has no plans to resume it.” Assembling an extensive list of the location of Wi-Fi access points can aid in geolocation, especially in areas where connections to cell towers are unreliable.\n","tags":["Google","Google privacy","News","privacy","StreetView","WiFi"],"title":"Google ditches all Street View Wi-Fi scanning"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-20T12:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/20/hacked-kaspersky-download-site-directs-users-to-fake-antivirus/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Kaspersky Lab now admits that people attempting to buy Kaspersky’s security products on Oct. 17 were redirected by hackers to a scareware site with links to fake antivirus software called Security Tool. Hackers have caused serious embarrassment for a major security technology company. Kaspersky Lab’s Website was hacked over the weekend, sending customers looking for security software to an external download page pushing counterfeit software.\nWhen users tried to download software from Kaspersky on Oct. 17, they were redirected to a malware site that tricked users into downloading fake antivirus software called Security Tool. Once executed, Security Tool displays pop-ups reporting a number of vulnerabilities and threats “found” to scare users into buying what it says is a full version in order to fix these problems.\n","tags":["hack","Kaspersky","Malware","News","report","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Hacked Kaspersky Download Site Directs Users to Fake Antivirus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-20T12:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/20/operation-payback-takes-down-uk-ip-office/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" HAVOC CAUSING hacker activist group Operation Payback has extended its reach and strangled the life out of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s website.\nYesterday they apparently took down the MPAA’s website in the US, and today, though already busy, they have widened their focus and laid a smackdown on the UK IPO, knocking its website offline.\nAccording to a blog post on the Panda security blog Anonymous is 4Chan, and yesterday a forum on that website published its list of targets and its timeline for attacks.\n","tags":["hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Operation Payback takes down UK IP office"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-20T12:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/20/turkish-hackers-attack-cdu-websites/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Two regional websites for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were hacked on Tuesday by unknown perpetrators claiming to be Turkish following controversial comments by her conservatives on immigration.\nPolice and domestic intelligence agencies are now investigating in both the city-state of Hamburg and the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after CDU officials said their party sites were paralysed overnight when hackers replaced their homepages with a black background featuring a Turkish crest and critical comments.\n","tags":["News","Politics","Security"],"title":"Turkish hackers attack CDU websites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T22:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/google-chrome-stable-channel-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 has been released to the stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Updates from the previous stable release include:\nHundreds of bug fixes An updated HTML5 parser File API Directory upload via input tag More information on these and other changes in Chrome 7 can be found on the Google Chrome blog. Download Chrome today! [Standalone / Offline setup here]\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"Google Chrome Stable Channel Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T21:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/intel-investing-up-to-8-billion-in-22nm-chips-creating-us-jobs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Intel has announced plans to invest between $6 billion and $8 billion on its next-generation 22nm manufacturing process across several existing US factories in Arizona (Fab 12 and Fab 32) and Oregon (D1C and D1D), along with construction of a new development fabrication plant in Oregon (D1X, to open in 2013). The projects will support 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs and result in 800 to 1,000 new permanent tech jobs.\n","tags":["intel","News"],"title":"Intel investing up to $8 billion in 22nm chips, creating US jobs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T21:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/thunderbird-3-1-5-and-3-0-9-updates-are-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Thunderbird 3.1.5 and Thunderbird 3.0.9 updates are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from www.GetThunderbird.com. These releases make several improvements to Thunderbird’s performance, stability, and security. There are also several fixes to improve the user interface and add-ons experience.\nThunderbird 3.1.5: http://getthunderbird.com/ Thunderbird 3.0.9: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/all-older.html We strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to these releases. If you already have Thunderbird 3.1 or 3.0, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.\n","tags":["Mozilla","Thunderbird","Updates"],"title":"Thunderbird 3.1.5 and 3.0.9 Updates Are Now Available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/thief-steals-laptop-returns-data-on-usb-stick/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A university professor in Sweden has “hope for humanity” after the thief who stole his laptop backed up all his data and mailed it to him on a USB stick.\nHaving your laptop stolen sucks, but what really hurts is the loss of everything on it. Whether it’s family vacation photos or the sum total of your life’s work, that’s stuff that you just can’t get back unless you’re seriously conscientious about making backups. And come on, who does that? So when a Swedish professor discovered that somebody had swiped his laptop, he was understandably crushed.\n","tags":["Interesting","News"],"title":"Thief Steals Laptop, Returns Data on USB Stick"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T20:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/does-apple-want-to-buy-facebook/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Peter Kafka at All Things Digital thinks that Steve Jobs might want to buy Facebook. His reasoning is that Jobs, when asked what Apple plans to do with its now $51 billion in cash, said, “We firmly believe that one or more unique strategic opportunities will present itself to us, and we’ll be in a position to take advantage of it.” Kafka believes that one such “unique strategic” opportunity is called Facebook.\n","tags":["Apple","Facebook"],"title":"Does Apple want to buy Facebook?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T20:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/internet-about-to-hit-2-billion-users/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" If the internet is feeling a little more crowded these days, there’s good reason.\nAccording to a report out Tuesday, there will be 2 billion Web dwellers by the end of this year.\nThe number of internet users worldwide has doubled in the past five years according to the report, from the International Telecommunication Union.\nMuch of the big number can be attributed to internet growth in developing countries. The report said 162 million of the 226 million new Internet users in 2010 will live in those countries, where Web access is still growing.\n","tags":["internet","News","report"],"title":"Internet about to hit 2 billion users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T20:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/microsoft-bets-to-win-in-the-cloud-and-rival-google/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft has ramped up its battle with Google in wooing business customers with its next generation cloud-based product.\nWhile the software giant dominates the office space with a 94% market share it has been facing increased competition from Google.\nAt a San Francisco event, Microsoft unveiled Office 365.\nThe product brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online.\nThis means instead of paying for packaged software and installing it on a PC or corporate server, Microsoft will host and deliver the software from its own giant data centers.\n","tags":["Cloud","Cloud Computing","Google","Microsoft","Microsoft Office"],"title":"Microsoft bets to win in the cloud and rival Google"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T19:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/copy-machines-spill-identity-secrets/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Personal information scanned into certain digital photocopier hard drives can be easily tapped, according to a CBC News investigation probing the second-life of older machines that are re-sold or leased.\nCBC purchased a used Canon Image Runner Color 3200 from a UPS franchise on Kijiji, an online classifieds website. The copier’s two hard drives were removed and plugged into a laptop, which revealed the units had not been wiped clean before being sold and shipped.\n","tags":["advice","privacy"],"title":"Copy machines spill identity secrets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T18:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/first-360-video-on-youtube-ever/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Today Doritos Late Night presented the first 360 degree musicvideo on youtube. It’s the musicvideo of Professor Green with his latest hit: “Coming to get me”. Go and check it out!!!!\n","tags":["link","Video","YouTube"],"title":"First 360° video on Youtube, ever!!!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T18:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/steve-jobs-on-androids-fragmentation/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Apple’s CEO says that Android is fragmented and that the open vs. closed dilemma is not important as long as Apple’s proprietary mobile operating system manages to provide a better user experience.\n“Many Android OEMs install proprietary user-interfaces to differentiate themselves from the commodity Android experience. The user is left to figure it all out. Compare this with iPhone where ever handset works the same. (…) We think the open vs closed is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is: What’s best for the customer? Fragmented vs. integrated. We think Android is very very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day.”\n","tags":["Android","Apple","Google"],"title":"Steve Jobs on Android's Fragmentation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T12:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/implantable-leds-can-really-get-under-your-skin/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Maybe your main problem with tattoos is probably the fact that you’ve never been able to play Pong on them. But those problems seem to be over now that an international team of researchers, led by John Rogers at the University of Illinois, has developed a new flexible array of LEDs that can be implanted under the skin.\nThe researchers managed to make the LED matrix implantable by encasing the electronics in a thin layer of silicon rubber that makes the whole thing functional even when exposed to biofluids. Mc10, a new company founded by Rogers, hopes to commercialize the new technology over the next few years.\n","tags":["Interesting","News"],"title":"Implantable LEDs Can Really Get Under Your Skin"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T12:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/less-than-5-of-ipv4-addresses-left-says-nro/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" In late January, the Number Resource Organization (NRO) warned that IPv4 addresses were drying up, with less than 10% unallocated — a figure that has shrunk rapidly over the last nine months. The organization now reports that two more blocks of IPv4 addresses have been assigned, putting the number of vacant addresses below 5%.\n“This is a major milestone in the life of the Internet, and means that allocation of the last blocks of IPv4 to the RIRs is imminent,” said NRO chairman Axel Pawlik. He continued by urging all Internet stakeholders to take action now by adopting IPv6, the “next generation” of the Internet Protocol, which offers infinitely more address space. IPv4 (32-bit) gives up to 4.3 billion addresses, whereas IPv6 (128-bit) provides 340 undecillion addresses (340 billion billion billion billion — that’s 36 zeros).\n","tags":["IPv4","report"],"title":"Less than 5% of IPv4 addresses left says NRO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T12:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/microsoft-sees-unprecedented-wave-of-java-malware-exploits/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" There has been an “unprecedented wave” of exploits against vulnerabilities in Oracle’s Java during the third quarter of this year, according to data from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. The software giant provided the following data to back its claims, outlining three specific vulnerabilities (all of which have patches available) that are being exploited en masse:\nCVE Attacks Computers Description 2008-5353 3,560,669 1,196,480 A deserialization issue in vulnerable versions of JRE (Java Runtime Environment) allows remote code execution through Java-enabled browsers on multiple platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple Mac OS X. 2009-3867 2,638,311 1,119,191 Another remote code execution, multi-platform issue caused by improper parsing of long file:// URL arguments. 2010-0094 213,502 173,123 Another deserialization issue, very similar to CVE-2008-5353. As you can see, the first two are particularly worrying: they’ve gone from hundreds of thousands per quarter to millions. The third one is the newest, so it’s possible that it will also do the same.\n","tags":["Apple","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Microsoft sees \"unprecedented wave\" of Java malware exploits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T12:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-trash-talks-windows-7/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google just took a jab at Microsoft. Oh, the search giant already did that last week, and it wasn’t the first time? Yes, you’re right, but now it’s Google CEO Eric Schmidt targeting the software giant’s biggest product, the latest version of which is particularly successful. Schmidt recently made comments about Windows 7 during a question and answer session at the 25th anniversary celebration of MIT’s legendary Media Lab.\nIn a wide-ranging discussion with National Public Radio journalist John Hockenberry, Schmidt proclaimed that the goal of great technology is to get people to use computers less so they can be more productive. That’s fine, but he didn’t stop there. “The hours I spend reprogramming my PC in Windows 7 is not a very good use of my time,” he told students in the MIT Media Lab auditorium according to CRN. “Why I choose to do that in the first place is a problem with judgment,” he added.\n","tags":["Google","Windows"],"title":"Google CEO Eric Schmidt trash talks Windows 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T12:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/radeon-hd-6870-6850-break-cover/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The time for rumors and speculations is drawing to a close—as far as AMD’s upcoming Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 are concerned, at least. These two next-generation graphics cards are churning away in Damage Labs as we speak, and for the first time, we can bring you official, genuine pictures of them. Here’s the 6870…\n…and its little brother, the Radeon HD 6850:\nand More pictures:\n","tags":["AMD","ATI","Hardware"],"title":"Radeon HD 6870, 6850 break cover"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T11:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/steve-jobs-google-android-isnt-really-that-open/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, said that Google’s mobile platform was “fragmented” and bad for developers and consumers.\nSteve Jobs launched in to an astonishing five-minute critique of rival companies, operating systems and platforms during the earnings call, in which Apple announced record profits of $20bn for the quarter.\nHe said that the Google Android platform was “fragmented”, and not as open as some people made out, while also saying that iPad-style tablet computers with smaller 7in screens would be “dead on arrival”.\n","tags":["Android","Apple","Google","iOS","report"],"title":"Steve Jobs: Google Android isn't really that open"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-19T10:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/19/sony-and-google-launch-internet-television-sets/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google is set to expand into television production by joining forces with Sony to release new TV sets that allow viewers to browse the Internet. The high-definition sets, which were unveiled in New York, will have LCD screens ranging from 24 inches to 46 inches and a remote control system that comes with the standard QWERTY keyboard to enter search requests, send emails or make comments on the Web whilst simultaneously whilst watching television.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","Google Chrome","intel","Internet TV","Sony","TV"],"title":"Sony and Google Launch Internet Television Sets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/acrobat-x-is-here/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The New Acrobat X is finally here!\nWhat can it do for education? Here is a quick list of new and improved features:\nNew user interface\nThe Interface tool pane brings top user needs out front Customizable Tool Bar Tools Pane reveals most useful tools to improve productivity Tools and Tasks are easier to access HUD display provides more real estate for viewing __\nAmazing document repurposing\nNew export options allow for Word and Excel options including headers, footers, and worksheets New scanning engine improves accuracy and file size Efficient tagging and reflow ensure viewing and access on a variety of screens __\n","tags":["3D","Adobe","Announcement","News","report"],"title":"Acrobat X is Here!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/facebook-privacy-issues-again/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Media report about a new privacy leak on Facebook which has been found just recently. It is possible to find out with which persons someone is in contact with – therefore one just has to create a fake account using a known email address of the person to spy upon. Facebook doesn’t verify whether the address is real so the new account can already be used. Up to 20 contacts are visible according to the reports.\n","tags":["advice","Facebook","Privacy","Social Media","solution"],"title":"Facebook Privacy Issues – again"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/fake-twitter-homepage-kit-serves-up-naked-ladies-and-infection-files/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"You might be wondering why the frontpage of Twitter has a big “Edit” line running through it in the screenshot below:\nThe answer, of course, is that this is not the real Twitter page at all. It’s part of an increasingly popular kit used for shenanigans:\nThe scammer downloads the zip, edits the links in the .htm file and places something likely to catch the attention of an end-user underneath the “Edit” line. The fact that the fake content is sitting directly underneath the “New Twitter” promotional text is not a coincidence.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Phishing","report","scam","Social Media","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Fake Twitter homepage kit serves up naked ladies and infection files"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/avira-know-better-what-to-put-and-where/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sometimes we encounter childish messages from the authors in the body of malware. A variant of the TDSS family we got recently is even going a step further by offering a convenient location for a malware signature. The samples include the message “Put your signature here”, which is shown when run inside a debugger.\nWhile in many cases signatures could be still useful for detection, Avira prefer to use other technologies which are more generic and proactive. This is especially the case with malware families like TDSS/Alureon, whose authors continuously adapt their creations so they are able to work around even proactive detection in a short time. This variant is detected as TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen3.\n","tags":["Interesting","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Avira know better what to put and where"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/realplayer-security-updates-published/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" RealNetworks, Inc. have published product upgrades addressing vulnerabilities in RealPlayer SP 1.1.4 and earlier.\nThe vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.\nWindows users of RealPlayer SP 1.1.4 and earlier are advised to upgrade to the latest version here\nFor more information, visit RealNetworks’ security advisory here\n","tags":["RealPlayer","Security","software","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"RealPlayer Security Updates Published"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/new-likejacking-attack-on-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Currently a new likejacking-attack is running on Facebook. If a user clicks on the link of a friend which is reads “I Will NEVER TEXT Again After Seeing THIS!! on CLICK HERE TO SEE.”, she or he will automatically “like” that link too due to some clever scripting on the attacking website.\nA second like-link says “This American GUY must be Stoned to Death for doing this to a GIRL (NO SURVEYS)! … on CLICK HERE TO SEE.”. This is another variant of the same likejacking-attack.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","Phishing","Social Media","Security"],"title":"New Likejacking-Attack on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T22:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/yahoo-mimics-facebook-connect-with-y-connect/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Yahoo will soon launch a service called “Y Connect” with features very similar to those of Facebook Connect — portable identity management, integrating Yahoo content on third-party websites, and sharing data about what you’re doing and where with your Yahoo contacts.\nThe service will share info with your contacts through Yahoo Pulse, the Threadsy-like activity stream that Yahoo launched about four months ago to compete with Google Buzz and other social offerings.\n","tags":["Yahoo"],"title":"Yahoo Mimics Facebook Connect With “Y Connect”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T21:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/intel-quietly-lowers-prices-on-core-i3-550-others/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Intel regularly tweaks its price list with nary a word to the masses, but the Tech Report caught chipzilla red-handed this time. The site reports that Intel has lowered prices on four desktop and two mobile processors. Looking at the latest price sheet (PDF), Intel cut 15% off its 3.2GHz i3-550, putting it at $117. That’s identical to the 3.06GHz i3-540 and only $4 more than the 2.93GHz i3-530 — the company’s cheapest i3 desktop offering.\n","tags":["AMD","Hardware","intel","News","price"],"title":"Intel quietly lowers prices on Core i3-550, others"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T21:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/nvidia-forceware-drivers-260-89-offer-blu-ray-3d-support/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Just last week NVidia distributed a beta version of their Forceware drivers 260.89. The main feature was support for their recently launched GeForce GT 430, and although a few other improvements were mentioned there was nothing really outstanding. This time around the company offers the final release of these drivers with pretty much the same improvements, plus support for playing back Blu-ray 3D discs when connecting your GPU to a 3D TV through HDMI.\n","tags":["3D","driver","News","nvidia","Updates"],"title":"NVidia Forceware drivers 260.89 offer Blu-ray 3D support"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T21:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/facebook-privacy-breach-users-info-leaked-to-advertising-tracking-firms/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The information being transmitted is one of Facebook’s basic building blocks: the unique “Facebook ID” number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with “everyone,” including age, residence, occupation and photos.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Phishing","privacy","report","review","Security"],"title":"Facebook Privacy Breach: Users' Info Leaked To Advertising, Tracking Firms"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T21:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/facebook-apps-transmitted-personal-info/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" NEW YORK — The Wall Street Journal is reporting that 10 popular Facebook applications have been transmitting users’ personal identifying information to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies.\nThe newspaper said Monday that the breach also includes users who set all their information to be completely private. And in some cases, it says, the apps provided access to friends’ names.\nA Facebook spokesman told the Journal on Sunday that the company would introduce new technology to contain the breach. It’s not clear how long the breach went on.\n","tags":["analyze","alert","Facebook","report","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Facebook apps transmitted personal info"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T11:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/nvidia-launches-gt440-cards/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" While NVidia’s big news may have been its upcoming budget-range GeForce GT 430 1GB cards which leaked out earlier this month, it seems that the company has been hiding another secret: the GeForce GT 440 range.\nQuietly detailed on the company’s website, the NVidia GeForce GT 440 range of cards is designed to offer OEMs a DirectX 11-compatible card for adding in to their mid-range machines.\nAccording to the reference specifications, the GT440 cards feature a 594MHz graphics clock, 1,189MHz processor clock, and either 800 or 900MHz memory clock, along with 144 CUDA cores. Interestingly, NVidia will be offering at least two different models: a budget-friendly version featuring 1.5GB of GDDR3, or a high-end model with 3GB of GDDR3.\n","tags":["3D","Announcement","Hardware","News","nvidia"],"title":"NVidia launches GT440 cards"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-18T10:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/18/hackers-access-107k-student-records-at-unfl/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The good news is that overseas hackers apparently did not change the grades of more then 100 thousand University of North Florida students when they broke into the computer system in September.\nThe bad news is that personal information like names and social security numbers for those students may now be in the hands of those hackers.\nThe FBI is investigating the attack, which was discovered by the university in a routine check of the server.\nAccording to University officials, the hacker had access to the system between September 24th and September 29th, but the University did not say when the breach was discovered. The Florida Times-Union newspaper said the university learned of the attack in September but did not notify potential victims because they were still investigating\n","tags":["hack","News","report","Security"],"title":"Hackers Access 107K Student Records At UNFL"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-17T22:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/17/googles-first-personalized-doodle/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google found a nice way to wish you Happy Birthday. If you visit Google’s homepage when you are signed in and it’s your birthday, you’ll see a special doodle that links to your Google profile. When you go to your profile, you’ll find colorful confetti and a Happy Birthday message, but that’s not new.\n“Because doodles are such a fun part of the search experience, we thought we’d share a fun little way Google will help celebrate your birthday. When you include your date of birth on your Google profile, you may notice a special treat on the Google homepage on your birthday (be sure to sign in). Click on the doodle for another birthday surprise,” informs the Google blog.\n","tags":["Google","Interesting","News"],"title":"Google's First Personalized Doodle"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-17T22:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/17/facebook-and-skype-deal-to-dial-friends-and-family/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Skype is integrating with Facebook to make it easier to call and video chat with friends and family on the social network.\nThe deal comes amid fevered rumors that Facebook plans to launch a phone of its own.\nMeanwhile Skype is gearing up for a $100m share issue.\n","tags":["Facebook","Skype","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook and Skype deal to dial friends and family"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-17T08:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/17/install-adobe-air-on-64-bit-ubuntu-10-10/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Right now Adobe AIR is only officially available for 32-bit Linux. But it does work on 64-bit Linux with the 32-bit compatibility libraries. There are several ways to install Adobe AIR on Linux. My preferred way on Ubuntu is to use the .deb package. However the .deb package distributed by Adobe can only be installed on 32-bit systems. Good news is that this can be easily fixed! To install the Adobe AIR .deb package on a 64-bit system just follow these steps:\n","tags":["Adobe","How to"],"title":"Install Adobe AIR on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-17T08:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/17/first-firmware-for-nokia-c7-v12-003-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Nokia released its first major firmware for Nokia C7 (RM 675) for all Versions.\nThe new firmware should be available in a few days via NSU or OTA.\nThere is no changelog, because it’s the first and initial firmware.\nThis firmware is for RM675 for all countries and regions.\nyou can check here your product code, if it’s available for you, too. or start your Nokia Software Updater (NSU).\n","tags":["Mobile","Updates"],"title":"First Firmware for Nokia C7 V12.003 released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T22:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/average-teen-sends-3339-texts-per-month/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" If you needed more proof that texting is on the rise, here’s a stat for you: the average teenager sends over 3,000 texts per month. That’s more than six texts per waking hour.\nAccording to a new study from Nielsen, our society has gone mad with texting, data usage and app downloads. Nielsen analyzed the mobile data habits of over 60,000 mobile subscribers and surveyed over 3,000 teens during April, May and June of this year. The numbers they came up with are astounding.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Average teen sends 3,339 texts per month"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T22:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/facebook-giving-you-more-control/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced on their blog that the site will soon be offering new features and controls. The features include New Facebook Groups, a Dashboard for Applications, and the ability to Download Your Information.\n#1 — Why the “new” Groups? According to Zuckerberg, people frequently tell them:\n“I’d share this thing, but I don’t want to bother 250 people. Or my grandmother. Or my boss.”\nNow we thought that’s what Friends Lists are for… but then, even Zuckerberg has admitted that Friends Lists are too difficult for most people to effectively manage. So this “completely overhauled, brand new version of Groups” is really mostly the same old Groups that we’ve been using since early 2009, with some PR spin.\n","tags":["Announcement","Facebook","News","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook: Giving You More Control?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/gene-simmons-websites-taken-down-by-hackers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Some people didn’t like his comments about downloading…\nTwo of Gene Simmons’ official sites were shut down after hacker attacks by a group called Anonymous, associated with the 4chan.org forum. The attacks were in response to comments by Simmons about how the music industry should have been tougher with illegal downloaders.\nBoth SimmonsRecords.com and GeneSimmons.com were taken offline briefly due to the attacks.\nSimmons had made the comment, “The music industry was asleep at the wheel, and didn’t have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we’re left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There’s no industry.”\n","tags":["hack","Music","News","report","Security"],"title":"Gene Simmons Websites Taken Down By Hackers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/zeus-baddies-copy-conficker-tactics/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Variants of the infamous ZeuS cybercrime toolkit have begun using the tactics of the infamous Conficker worm in a bid to get ahead of security defences.\nThe so-called Licat worm, which is “strongly linked” to ZeuS, represents a likely attempt to reinforce botnets following recent arrests of suspected bank fraud money mules, as well as hackers tied to ZeuS in the UK, US and Ukraine over the last month or so.\n","tags":["Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"ZeuS baddies copy Conficker tactics"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/opera-announces-last-10-70-build-opera-11-complete-with-browser-extensions-comes-next/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Very soon, the first build of Opera 11 will be released, and with it will come the long-awaited support for browser extensions.\nYesterday at Up North Web, Opera Software’s global press day in Oslo, Norway, it was confirmed that Opera 11 will support browser extensions, the plug-ins that users can incrementally add to their browser to customize the experience. All of Opera’s competitors: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and now Safari, each offer their own extension architecture already.\n","tags":["Announcement","News","Opera"],"title":"Opera announces last 10.70 build; Opera 11, complete with browser extensions, comes next"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/bing-will-use-your-facebook-friends-to-personalize-search-results/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft and Facebook Wednesday unveiled some new search tools for Bing which integrate data from a user’s circle of friends into Bing’s search results.\nIn the Bing blog on Wednesday, Microsoft Senior Vice President of online services Satya Nadella said 50% of users consider their friends’ opinions when making a decision online. Bing is trying to capitalize on this by incorporating the “likes” of a user’s friend list into search results.\n","tags":["Announcement","Bing","Facebook","News","Search"],"title":"Bing will use your Facebook friends to personalize search results"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/help-keep-your-account-safe-with-the-gmail-security-checklist/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Posted by Diana Phan, Gmail Support Team\nOctober is National Cyber Security Awareness month and a good time for a reminder about why hijackers do what they do and how you can protect your account. Check out the Online Security blog to learn about common hijacking techniques and security practices that will help you stay one step ahead of the bad guys. To help ensure your Gmail account is safe, take a minute to visit the Gmail help center and complete their new security checklist.\n","tags":["advice","Gmail","Google","Hijack","Security"],"title":"Help keep your account safe with the Gmail security checklist"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/gmail-auto-unsubscribe-search/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Gmail has a feature that lets you unsubscribe from a newsletter or a mailing list when you report one of the messages as spam.\n“You’ll see the unsubscribe tool when you mark a message from particular types of mailing lists as spam. If the particular message is a misuse of a mailing list you like to receive, you can Report spam as usual. But if you never want to receive another message or newsletter from that list again, click Unsubscribe instead. We’ll send a request to the sender that your email address be removed from the list.”\n","tags":["Gmail","gmail labs","Google","Tricks"],"title":"Gmail Auto-unsubscribe Search"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/firefox-is-getting-fast/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Firefox’s JavaScript engine, Spidermonkey (including the Tracemonkey and Jaegermonkey JITs) is now faster than Webkit’s JSCore on both Sunspider and V8. Great work, team!\nAlso, on the Sunspider benchmark, Mozilla is only about 1/100th of a second behind Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine (about 3.5%). Oh, and there’s Kraken, where we’re still solidly in the lead.\n","tags":["Firefox","Mozilla","News"],"title":"Firefox is getting fast!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T21:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/aboutsupport/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Welcome to our first release of the new Mozilla about:support add-on.\nabout:support was developed by Siddharth Agarwal with design input from Bryan Clark and testing by Roland Tanglao\nabout:support is based on Firefox’s about:support code, hence the name. It has been modified for Thunderbird to include email account specific information along with the normal preferences and add-ons.\nYou can access about:support from the Help Menu: Help -\u003e Troubleshooting Information which opens a new tab containing all your troubleshooting information including the Thunderbird specific IMAP, POP, and SMTP settings. The account information is often difficult for users to gather and deliver during the Thunderbird troubleshooting process. With the about:support add-on, the troubleshooting information is presented to the user such that it can be copied to the clipboard and pasted into a Thunderbird support forum like Get Satisfaction or emailed directly to others. With your help, Mozilla is hoping to get this add-on built directly into future versions of Thunderbird so please try it out and leave your feedback. See the about:support project page for links concerning issues, feedback, and ideas.\n","tags":["Announcement","Firefox","Mozilla","News","Thunderbird"],"title":"about:support"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T20:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/windows-phone-7-officially-launches-updates/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Windows Phone 7 officially launched 11Oct at a press event in NYC Monday morning. You can check out more here – http://www.windowsphone7.com\nBy the way, if you have any doubts about the platform or it’s responsiveness, you should really watch this video here – http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsphone/videoGallery.aspx?contentID=wp7_unveil03\u0026WT.z_convert=Share\nSeriously, watch the video. The responsiveness of the device is just flat out amazing. No lag whatsoever. If you’ve been a Windows Mobile user, this is a VERY, VERY good thing to see. I currently have a HTC Touch Pro 2 and the delay is soooo irritating. It’s even faster than my ZuneHD. Wait until you see the Bing Maps responsiveness, or the Bing Search (using Voice) feature.\n","tags":["News","Updates","Windows Phone","Windows Phone 7"],"title":"Windows Phone 7 Officially Launches – Updates!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T20:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/cyberlink-youmemo-with-windows-touch/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Do you have a family bulletin board? Leave notes on the refrigerator with to-do’s and reminders? CyberLink YouMemo lets you move all that on to your PC with a digitized pin board optimized for Windows Touch.\nYouMemo supports multi-touch allowing you to easily resize, rotate, or simply organize notes on your bulletin board. To create a note, simply tap on “Write a Memo” then flick to your preferred notepaper. YouMemo offers 27 different colored textures, 4 writing tools, and 11 different pen colors to choose from. There is also a library of 13 stamps for additional customization.\n","tags":["Offer","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Touch"],"title":"CyberLink YouMemo with Windows Touch"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T20:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/club-coee-on-windows/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I received a recommendation to check out Club Cooee. It takes the internet chat room to the next level in 3D rooms. You can run Club Cooee like a regular application or keep it always on top so you can do other tasks and see friends chatting in rooms at the same time.\nYou may also customize your room to your own taste and liking. Options include changing furniture, adding items or even adding your favorite videos, pictures, and music to play in the background. You can actually customize everything in the application, but it will require Cooee Points or Cooee Cash. Verifying your email allows you to earn $300, which covered everything I wanted to customize.\n","tags":["3D","Offer","Windows","Windows 7"],"title":"Club Coee on Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-16T17:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/16/adobe-air-for-android-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"As predicted Adobe AIR for Android is now available in the Android Market. Go get it.\n","tags":["Adobe","Announcement","News"],"title":"Adobe AIR for Android Now Available!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-15T16:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/15/facebook-introduces-disposable-passwords/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Accessing Facebook from a public computer or Internet cafe can now be done more securely. Moving to enhance online security, Facebook on Tuesday said that it will soon offer users the ability to receive one-time passwords on their mobile phones and that it has already enabled the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely.\n“We’re launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports,” said Facebook product manager Jake Brill in a blog post. “If you have any concerns about security of the computer you’re using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.”\n","tags":["Announcement","Facebook","Hijack","News","Password","Security","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook Introduces Disposable Passwords"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-15T15:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/15/fake-stuxnet-cleaner-literally-cleans-up-your-computer/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"W32.Stuxnet has been a subject of much discussion amongst security researchers and media, and we posted a series of blogs on the subject. As you may already be aware, Stuxnet is hot topic as the threat targets industrial control systems in order to take control of industrial facilities and systems, such as manufacturing assembly lines and even power plants.\nBecause Stuxnet is such major news, the miscreants who like to spread malware are not wasting much time taking advantage of this for their malicious activities. In our investigations we have discovered that various forums are discussing a free Stuxnet removal tool but unfortunately the tool is actually a piece of malware. We successfully obtained a sample of this tool and our analysis supported our sense of danger: Bottom line is, do NOT run the tool.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","scam","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"Fake Stuxnet cleaner literally cleans up your computer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-13T20:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/13/chrome-8-hits-dev-channel-with-gpu-acceleration-more-labs-offerings/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Windows/Mac/Linux: Chrome has hit version 8 in its Dev builds, adding more solid graphics acceleration to the web using your video hardware, along with a few new Labs features that herald the coming of Chrome OS.\nIf you’re using the Dev channel, open up a tab and type in about:labs. You’ll notice features there to turn off outdated plug-ins, enable “Remoting” support for Chrome, turn on the very useful Google Instant in the Chrome Omnibar, and enable a few other useful features, including GPU acceleration of the HTML5 Canvas feature.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","News","Updates"],"title":"Chrome 8 Hits Dev Channel with GPU Acceleration, More Labs Offerings"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-13T15:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/13/pooh-bear-no-this-is-redpoo-and-hes-out-to-scam-you/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Some domain names make you cringe, some make you smile…\nSuch was the case this morning, with redpoo.com a domain name whose registrar is the Center of Ukrainian Internet Names, and registered to:\nIgor Nikenin\nul. B. Pertrovskaya, dom 12, kv 74\nRostov na Donu, 344000\nRUSSIAN FEDERATION\nThe servers’ IP, 121.156.57.184, is located in the Republic of Korea.\nOther than the poor joke, the site serves various exploits which you can view in this Wepawet report.\n","tags":["Phishing","report","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Pooh Bear? No, this is Redpoo and he’s out to scam you"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-13T13:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/13/microsoft-fixes-49-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"As announced last Friday, Microsoft released 16 security bulletins on the October Patchday. They fix security vulnerabilities in various Windows operating systems and components like Internet Explorer, Windows Kernel, .Net frameworks, and Microsoft Office.\nAffected are all operating systems from Windows XP to Windows Server 2008 R2. Office needs to be updated from version XP to 2010 – also the Mac OS flavours. The patches fix critical rated vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 to 8.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Microsoft Office","Updates","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Server","Windows Vista","Windows XP"],"title":"Microsoft fixes 49 vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-12T13:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/12/buggy-paypal-phishing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Usually I have to wonder how much inventiveness the spammers and Phishers show. But, from time to time, it is funny to see some really stupid Phishing attempts. I do hope that nobody is falling for these puny attempts to fake Paypal we found today.\nThe email below is being sent with a German subject line and it is pretending to come from a German mail address, but the mail itself is written in English and it is allegedly pointing to paypal.com instead of paypal.de.\n","tags":["PayPal","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Buggy Paypal phishing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-12T12:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/12/online-pharmacy-spam-campaign-faking-twitter/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"During the weekend our spamtraps received large amounts of emails pretending to come from Twitter. This time, the social engineering twist lies within the subject of the email: It is “You have 2 urgent messages from Twitter!”, creating psychological pressure by some kind of emergency within in the social surroundings of Twitter users. This way the spammers try to increase the rate of the users that are opening the email and click on the links.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","spam","Twitter","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Online pharmacy spam campaign faking Twitter"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-08T22:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/08/another-record-patchday-ahead/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Redmond company today announced that it plans to release 16 security bulletins on coming Tuesday, Microsoft’s official monthly Patchday in October. Never before Microsoft released so many security bulletins on a Patchday.\nFour of these security bulletins are rated critical by the company. Thus they allow attackers to inject malicious code into computers without user interaction. Ten get the rating important, and another two are rated moderate.\n","tags":["Microsoft","News","Microsoft Office","Updates","Windows","Windows 7","Windows Server","Windows XP"],"title":"Another record Patchday ahead"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-07T18:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/07/this-offer-is-available-today-only/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Hmmm. That’s not what the source code says\nWe started out the day fat fingering the spelling of “youtube.com” and ended up at the typo squatting site behind the URL “youube.com.” youube.com redirects you to http://youtube.com-prizes.com – obviously a URL intended to make you think it’s really YouTube.\nLike so many of these “survey” scam web sites, the offer was available “today only: Thursday, October 7, 2010.” Obviously, this is to add a little bit of sales pressure to make a visitor go for the prize ASAP, or at least before midnight.\n","tags":["alert","Apple","Phishing","report","review","scam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"“This offer is available TODAY only!!!”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-07T18:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/07/twitter-password-phishing/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Our friend in the UK got this via a contact. It was from a Twitterer who obviously had his Twitter login stolen:\n(Twitter apparently is filtering this URL at this point.)\nThe link led to a phishing page that used the deceptive tactic of showing an error message: “Wrong Username/Email and password combination.” You login, it steals your Twitter password, sends the above Tweet to all your contacts and continuing rounding up passwords.\n","tags":["alert","Password","Phishing","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter password phishing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-07T14:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/07/facebook-spammer-fined-1-billion-usd/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"How does one say in French: “We’re gonna make an example out of you, boy”\nThe Toronto Sun is reporting that convicted spammer Adam Guerbuez of Montreal has been ordered to pay $1 billion to Facebook by Quebec Superior Court. The court was upholding a U.S. Federal court fine that resulted from a wave of four million spam ads sent to Facebook users in 2008.\nGuerbuez did not contest the Sept. 28 Quebec Superior Court ruling.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","News","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Facebook spammer fined $1 billion USD"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-07T14:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/07/adobe-fixes-reader-and-acrobat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe just released Reader and Acrobat version 9.4. The new release fixes some critical vulnerabilities which allow attackers to infect PCs – for example, just by browsing the net. Overall the update lists 23(!) entries in the CVE database as being solved with version 9.4.\nThe new version is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Unix systems. For those who still use the version 8, Reader and Acrobat 8.2.5 for Windows and Mac fix the security vulnerabilities. Windows and Mac users can download the updated version at Adobes download center, while Unix users need to download the new release from Adobe’s ftp server.\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","report","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe fixes Reader and Acrobat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-06T22:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/06/stuxnet-questions-and-answers/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Stuxnet continues to be a hot topic. Here are answers to some of the questions we’ve received.\nQ: What is Stuxnet?\nA: It’s a Windows worm, spreading via USB sticks. Once inside an organization, it can also spread by copying itself to network shares if they have weak passwords.\nQ: Can it spread via other USB devices?\nA: Sure, it can spread anything that you can mount as a drive. Like a USB hard drive, mobile phone, picture frame and so on.\n","tags":["0-Day","Malware","Question and Answer","report","review","Stuxnet","Security"],"title":"Stuxnet Questions and Answers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-02T11:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/02/windows-live-essentials-2011-is-available/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows Live Essentials 2011 is now out of beta.\nDownload links in bottom of page.\nThis package contain most essential programs needed for your digital life:\nWindows Live Essentials 2011 Advanced made easy Do more with Windows on your PC with free programs from Microsoft for photos, movies, instant messaging, email, social networking, and more. Get it all in one simple download.\nTo see if your system support this program, check System requirements\n","tags":["Download","Email","Messenger","Microsoft","Outlook","Silverlight","Updates","Writer"],"title":"Windows Live Essentials 2011 is available!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-10-02T10:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/10/02/messages-from-malware-authors-in-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"During our analysis of the different malware families we sometimes stumble upon some messages inside the viruses placed there by their authors. For example, the TDSS Trojan family is known to contain random strings from “Hamlet” and from the Bible. Also there is the Koobface family which contains random sentences – mostly taken from Wikipedia articles, like in the last variant we discovered, about the Tower of London.\nTDSS:\n","tags":["Fun","Interesting","Malware","review","Strings","Security"],"title":"Messages from Malware authors in Malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-30T22:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/30/stuxnet-in-the-news/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Stuxnet Trojan is very well covered in the media as more and more details about its sophisticated code become public. It abuses four previously unknown security vulnerabilities in Windows to enter the system and is specialized on attacking Siemens processing systems. An interesting information which didn’t get much attention yet comes from heise Security: The nuclear plant in Busheer isn’t really the target of the worm as rumours say, as the attacked systems aren’t approved for usage in nuclear plants.\n","tags":["Iran","Malware","News","Nuclear","Stuxnet","trending","Security"],"title":"Stuxnet in the news"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-30T11:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/30/google-offers-to-turn-off-threading-in-gmail/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has finally decided to allow users to turn off the controversial ‘conversation view’ threading functionality in Gmail.\nConversation view has been a characteristic of Gmail ever since it launched, but Google software engineer Dong Chen admitted in a blog post yesterday that it is the webmail service’s “most hotly debated feature “.\n“Threading enthusiasts say they spend less mental energy drawing connections between related messages, and that their inboxes are much less cluttered,” he wrote.\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","News"],"title":"Google offers to turn off threading in Gmail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-30T11:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/30/nokia-n8-shipments-begin/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Nokia would like the world to know that its upcoming smartphone, the N8, is finished. The first batch of devices has left the factories in Finland and China, and these N8s will soon end in the hands of customers all over the world.\nMany Nokia fans have wondered will there be further delays for the N8, and this is probably the best answer to that question. Recently, Nokia informed some of the customers who have pre-ordered the device they will be receiving it “during October,” as Nokia decided to “hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends.” However, Nokia immediately clarified that the N8 is not being delayed, and now it proved it with the pictures of N8s leaving the factory.\n","tags":["Mobile","News","Nokia","Smartphone"],"title":"Nokia N8 Shipments Begin"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-30T10:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/30/xmarks-service-ends-january-2011/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Xmarks will be shutting down free browser synchronization services on January 10, 2011. For details on how to transition to recommended alternatives, consult this page.\nFor the full story behind the Xmarks shutdown, please read their blog post.\nIt’s a sad story to me! 😢\nHere I found a good article to read: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/no-more-xmarks-no/192\n","tags":["Discontinue","Firefox","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Safari","Xmarks"],"title":"Xmarks service ends January 2011"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-29T00:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/29/microsoft-kills-live-space-blogs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft announced that it has collaborated with WordPress and now onwards it will be the default blogging platform for Windows Live users. This means Microsoft is killing it’s own blogging platform and suggesting users to go for better platform called ‘WordPress’.\nIn TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Windows Live Director ‘Dharmesh Mehta’ announced that all existing Windows Live Spaces users will be migrated over to an account at WordPress.com.\nSo now onwards users who sign up for a Windows Live account get free Hotmail , the Xbox Live site , a free blog from WordPress.com and other services.\n","tags":["breaking","Microsoft","MSN","News","Windows Live","WordPress"],"title":"Microsoft Kills Live Space blogs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-23T20:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/23/browser-cookies-are-becoming-an-issue/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The New York Times is reporting a rising number of law suits against some major players because of their use of persistent web tracking:\n— Fox Entertainment Group\n— NBC Universal\n— Specific Media\n— Quantcast\nThe Times said the suits are claiming that the companies used Flash cookies to collect data on browsing activities in spite of the fact that users had privacy settings on to block them.\nThose Local Shared Objects (LSOs) are persistent cookies that are stored in several ways and in some cases will restore themselves when deleted. One is available, with a detailed description here.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Firefox","News","privacy","review","Security"],"title":"Browser cookies are becoming an issue"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-23T20:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/23/twitter-xss-vulnerability-fixed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Twitterers are still clogging the micro-blogging service with little messages about the cross-site-scripting problem earlier today. Twitter has announced that the problem has been fixed.\nA cross-site scripting vulnerability using “onmouseover” was being widely exploited to spread worms and redirect viewers to malicious sites.\nStory here from The Register.\n","tags":["News","report","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter XSS vulnerability fixed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-23T12:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/23/more-spam-with-javascript-redirectors/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We received new spam emails which contain a JavaScript redirector in form of a HTML attachment. The emails we received have the subject “Consultation Appointment”.\nThe decrypted JavaScript consists of new JavaScript code.\nThis JavaScript redirector loads yet another JavaScript from the internet. The domain which is hosting the malicious .js is registered to someone from Malaga. Domain tools show that this person has registered about 2.400 other domains.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","review","spam","Security"],"title":"More Spam with JavaScript redirectors"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-21T20:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/21/twitter-xss-getting-abused/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" On Twitter a new security flaw gets currently exploited. Hackers found a way to inject malicious JavaScript code into tweets with the onMouseOver event. This can lead to pop-ups appearing, redirecting to websites, re-tweeting spam, or even worse things like cookie stealing (compromising the user accounts). The problem is that Twitter doesn’t properly filter out some tags in tweets.\nUsers should be very cautious when seeing colored text blocks (background and text colors are the same, called “rainbow tweets”) – these are currently mostly used to exploit the security vulnerability. Hopefully, Twitter closes the security hole soon! Until then, using the NoScript web browser extension or disabling JavaScript on Twitter helps against the attack. Also, using twitter applications which rely upon the Twitter API aren’t affected.\n","tags":["advice","report","Twitter","Vulnerability"],"title":"Twitter XSS getting abused"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-21T20:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/21/flash-player-updates-fix-0-day-vulnerability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe fixed the vulnerability in Flash Player in a record time again. Just one week after the 0-day became public and started to get exploited, an update is available to close the security hole. Even though Adobe Reader and Acrobat are affected (which are supposed to get an update in 2 weeks), until now we’ve only seen exploits against the Windows Flash Player.\nUsers and administrators should update their Flash Player as soon as possible! The version 10.1.85.3 fixes the issue for Windows, Unix, Solaris and is available through Adobe’s download center. Android users can get the update to 10.1.95.1 on the Android Market Place.\n","tags":["0-Day","Adobe","advice","Flash","flash player","Updates","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Flash Player Updates fix 0-day-vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-20T11:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/20/scammers-set-their-sights-on-resident-evil-afterlife/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Resident Evil. Man, those films are terrible.\nFrankly, I’m happy to end the writeup right there, but if I did you’d miss out on all the fun.\nResident Evil Afterlife is now in cinemas (unfortunately) and scammers are all too happy to cash in.\nwatchresidentevil4(dot)com is our port of call today:\nTry to watch the film, and you’re prompted to install ClickPotato (from Pinball Corp).\nThere’s also four other items preticked, which is nice of them.\nInstalling that lot gives you a prompt to “see premium content”.\n","tags":["Phishing","report","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Scammers set their sights on Resident Evil: Afterlife"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-20T11:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/20/security-issues-on-android/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" One unique security feature of Android is the permission check when installing 3rd party apps. The system lists all permissions that an app requires and asks the user to check if that’s alright. Such permissions are the ability to receive your location, send or receive text messages, internet access, phone calls and many more. The user can be sure that the app is not doing any of such activities without the appropriate permission. In case the developer forgets to add a particular permission then the operating system will simply block the corresponding function which leads to a “Force Close”, which means the app will be terminated.\n","tags":["advice","Android","Malware","Security","Vulnerability"],"title":"Security issues on Android"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-17T13:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/17/browser-updates-again/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google released version 6.0.472.59 of its Chrome web browser. It fixes 10 security vulnerabilities; 1 is only affecting Mac OS X and critical, 6 are rated “high” in their severity. As usual, the update should get delivered and installed automatically – but it doesn’t hurt to check via the “Info about Chrome” option in the “settings” menu whether the new version is already installed.\nThe Mozilla developers pulled the update to Firefox 3.6.9 due to some stability issues some users experienced. Now Firefox 3.6.10 is available which fixes the security vulnerabilities like 3.6.9 and also the instabilities. It is available via “Help” – “Check for Updates” and should be installed ASAP, too.\n","tags":["Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","Mozilla","Updates"],"title":"Browser Updates, again"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-17T11:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/17/new-phishing-spam-waves-using-facebook-as-bait/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"We have started to see again a large increase in the amount of emails pretending to come from Facebook. There are two types of emails which are being sent in large amounts currently. Both of them use classical types of social engineering techniques.\nThe first type is using the old trick with “the photos”. The final target is a website where SMSes can be sent for “free” (note the quotes). I would like to emphasize again that there is nothing out there for free. Even if you don’t pay for it, those who offer the service (or whatever is given for “free”) do get something in exchange. It might be your telephone number, your email address or something similar which is worth a lot on the Internet.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"New phishing-spam waves using Facebook as bait"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-17T07:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/17/the-anti-botnet-initiative/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The Anti-Botnet Initiative has now been started. The initiative is a cooperation of eco and The German Federal Bureau for Information Security (BSI) and has created a telephone hotline for persons which may have their computers infected and seem to be a part of a botnet. In order to be able to detect this, the major ISPs in Germany are also cooperating (1und1, Telekom, Kabel BW, NetCologne, QSC and Versatel). The ISPs monitor suspicious activity on all IP addresses in their pool. As suspicious activity is considered, for example, the sending of huge amounts of data on certain ports like 25 for SMTP (used to send spam emails), incoming HTTP connections (used to serve HTTP connections) and so on. Once the ISP detects this, the customer gets an email notification with information about the suspicious activity and various other information (like the telephone number of the hotline). The user is also instructed to have a look on the www.botfrei.de website.\n","tags":["News","Security"],"title":"The Anti-Botnet Initiative"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-11T17:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/11/here-you-have-worm-linked-to-cyber-jihadists/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A worm collectively dubbed by the security industry as the “Here you have worm” has been making its way onto corporate networks over the past 24 hours. The worm arrives via e-mail using the subject line “Here you have” or “Just For you“ along with an executable disguised as a PDF file. It first appeared last month sending spam e-mails from iraq_resistance@yahoo.com.\nThe worm creates the following files: (Note: See the full report in our sandbox -\u003e http://x.maldb.com/?p=44309#more-44309)\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","review","warning","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"“Here you have” worm linked to cyber jihadists"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-09T17:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/09/new-0-day-exploit-for-adobe-reader/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" A malicious PDF file has turned up which exploits a new security vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat – even in the most current version 9.3.4 and 8.2.4, on all supported platforms. There is currently no update available from Adobe which fixes the vulnerability. The company is aware of the problem though.\nThe weakness is a buffer overflow within the CoolType.dll of the Adobe Reader and Acrobat installation. While parsing a PDF document with specially prepared SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets) fonts it is possible to abuse the vulnerability to execute malware.\n","tags":["0-Day","Adobe","PDF","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"New 0-day Exploit for Adobe Reader"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-08T19:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/08/browser-updates/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Mozilla foundation just released the popular web browser Firefox in version 3.6.9. The new version fixes overall 14 security vulnerabilities of which 10 are rated critical by the developers. Additionally, they added a new feature called “X-FRAME-OPTIONS“-header which shall help mitigating clickjacking attacks as web site owners can ensure with this header that their content isn’t inserted into other sites via frames. The update is available through the automatic update mechanism ( via the “Help” – “Search for updates” menu).\n","tags":["advice","Apple","Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","Mozilla","Safari","Safari 5","Updates"],"title":"Browser Updates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-09-04T20:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/09/04/mitigation-for-windows-applications-dll-search-path-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A whole bunch of Windows applications is vulnerable to a so-called binary-planting attack which allows for remote code execution. Microsoft released a security advisory about this issue which isn’t easy to fix properly. This issue arises due to the (defined and well documented) behavior of Windows when loading libraries by an application. A .dll to load gets searched in a certain standard path list. This list also includes the current working directory, which is the place a document gets opened from for example. When a file with the name of a DLL which the corresponding application needs to load is placed into the working directory, it will get loaded – this can be a malicious DLL though.\n","tags":["advice","Microsoft","solution","Vulnerability"],"title":"Mitigation for Windows Applications DLL-Search-Path Vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-29T23:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/29/one-million-calls-placed-from-gmail-in-24-hours/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" If you’re as big as Google, there’s no such thing as a small product launch. So when Google introduced voice calls into its webmail service Gmail, essentially launching a Skype competitor, it was bound to be a popular feature.\nHow popular, exactly? Well, according to a tweet from Google, the users seem to love it, as more than one million calls were placed in the first 24 hours since the feature went live.\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","report","review","voice"],"title":"One Million Calls Placed From Gmail in 24 Hours"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-29T14:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/29/this-could-save-your-life/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" The following internet advice which may have a subject title such as above could just get you killed.\nLike any other middle aged, balding, over-weight chap my mother still worries about me. So when her friend sent this to her and many other people, she forwarded it to me first:-\nJust in case!!!\nLet’s say it’s 6.15pm and you’re going home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job.\n","tags":["advice","alert","spam","Security"],"title":"This could save your LIFE!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-29T14:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/29/malicious-warez-site-offers-firefox-4-0-beta-download-scam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Like a lot of seedy stuff, this started with a Twitter post:.\nThe current working version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser is 3.6.8. Version 4 is in beta testing. You get them FREE from Mozilla..\nWhy would you need a crack (program with its password broken) or a keygen (application that generates a password for a password-protected program) for something that is FREE?\nWell, there’s a sucker born every minute and the folks at this warez (pirated software) site are betting there are a lot of them using Twitter.\n","tags":["Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Malware","Mozilla","scam","Twitter","warning","Security"],"title":"Malicious warez site offers Firefox 4.0 beta download scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-29T14:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/29/the-bad-guys-are-going-after-the-pirates/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"File-sharing organization Pirate Bay has been controversial for a long time, like maybe the length of its entire existence. It’s been in the news recently because a number of governments are trying to shut it down. That’s a situation ripe for social engineering.\nWe found this scheme this morning: a number of typo-squatting sites carrying the following. (Note: the REAL Pirate Bay site is thepiratebay.org.) What would lead a victim to this? The phony site piratebay.com (below) comes up as the third result on a Google search for “piratebay” or fourth for “pirate bay.”\n","tags":["alert","Malware","P2P","Phishing","Piracy","scam","Security"],"title":"The bad guys are going after the Pirates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-29T13:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/29/microsoft-releases-work-around-tool-for-dll-loading-vulnerability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has posted an advisory that explains the “DLL preloading attacks” and offers a work-around tool that “allows customers to disable the loading of libraries from remote network or WebDAV shares.\nThis tool can be configured to disallow insecure loading on a per-application or a global system basis.”\nWhen an application loads a .dll file, but doesn’t name a full path name,Windows searches a pre-defined set of directories for it. Exploiting this, an intruder could social engineer a victim into loading a malicious .dll from a USB drive or from a network and execute arbitrary code.\n","tags":["Microsoft","solution","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Microsoft releases work-around tool for DLL loading vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-29T13:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/29/how-to-get-hacked-on-facebook/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"One of the most common scenarios we observe on a daily basis are users coaxed into phishing campaigns and malicious applications on Facebook. As we interact with our friends and family on social networks, we tend to trust of any and all of the information that appears to be from our “trusted network.” However, Facebook is one of the most trolled social networks by cyber criminals. They are waiting for you to make a mistake and once you make it, they will be sure to hack you and exploit your friends trust through your newly hacked account.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","Phishing","Security"],"title":"How to Get Hacked on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-27T09:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/27/facebook-login-phishing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Here’s one of the latest Facebook phish attempts: videos of “beautifull” girls:\nIt might look like the Facebook login page, but, check out the URL. I don’t think you want to log in to Facebook there.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","Security"],"title":"Facebook login phishing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-27T09:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/27/dll-hijacking-evolved/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Back in November 2007, I’ve seen this technique used by one of the variant of Worm called W32/Drom. The technique was not to execute the malicious file or component of the worm but to prevent Antivirus Program from running. The Worm queries the following Antivirus registries to get the Installation Path, once acquired, it creates a folder named “ws2_32.dll” with Hidden and System attributes on that location.\nAs I test this technique, it prevented the program from running as it first loads the “ws2_32.dll” folder in the current directory.\n","tags":["Hijack","Malware","Security"],"title":"DLL Hijacking Evolved"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-27T08:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/27/brand-new-0-day-exploit-the-world-is-going-to-end-yet-again/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Sigh… The latest “exploit” that affects hundreds of programs and will be the end of the world as we currently know it is actually a well documented feature of Windows. It has actually been around since the DOS days.\nIn the old days we used to call these Companion viruses. It worked by using a different file extension that will be executed before the real executable. For example if you had a “gwbasic.exe” you would create a “gwbasic.com” anywhere in the path and if the user just typed “gwbasic” he would execute the “gwbasic.com” and not the “gwbasic.exe”. If the author of the “gwbasic.com” was ‘nice’ he could execute the “gwbasic.exe” so as to make the existence of the “gwbasic.com” file harder to detect.\n","tags":["0-Day","exploit","Hijack","Malware","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Brand new 0-day Exploit. The world is going to end! Yet again…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-16T14:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/16/internet-explorer-turns-15/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft’s web browser Internet Explorer was launched 15 years ago. While it had its ups and downs over the years – version 6 was plagued by countless security issues, which made it one of the most hated browsers around – it’s still the most popular browser in the world, with the last couple of versions improving dramatically on their troubled predecessor.\nThe first version of the browser, Internet Explorer 1, debuted on August 16, 1995. It was based on Mosaic, a web browser Microsoft had licensed from a company called Spyglass Inc. Starting with version 3.0, Microsoft started bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, increasing its market share dramatically and ultimately squeezing once dominant browser Netscape Navigator out of the market completely.\n","tags":["Browsers","Internet Explorer","Microsoft"],"title":"Internet Explorer Turns 15"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-16T14:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/16/facebook-dislike-button-scam-spreads-virally/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Have you seen a message like this on Facebook?\nI just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!\nIf so, don’t click on the link.\nIt’s the latest survey scam spreading virally across Facebook, using the tried-and-tested formula used in the past by other viral scams including “Justin Bieber trying to flirt”, “Student attacked his teacher and nearly killed him”, “the biggest and scariest snake” and the “world’s worst McDonald’s customer”.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Social Media","warning","Security"],"title":"Facebook Dislike button scam spreads virally"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-14T21:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/14/facebook-refreshes-notes-application/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Until now, Facebook Notes has only supported text formatting through HTML, making formatting a challenging task for the majority of the site’s 500 million members. Today the social network has rolled out a refreshed version of Notes to remedy the problem.\nThe Facebook Notes application has been overhauled with a new look and feel that includes an easier-to-use left-hand menu and a few notable new features.\nThe most significant update to Notes is the addition of a text editor that includes standard formatting options that let Facebook users click to bold, italicize, underline, indent quotes and add bullet or numbered lists to their notes. Facebook Notes also now lets users tag Facebook Pages in their notes and more easily locate saved drafts.\n","tags":["Facebook"],"title":"Facebook Refreshes Notes Application"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-14T20:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/14/how-to-install-lnk-update-kb2286198-on-windows-xp-sp2/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft discontinued support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 on July 13th, and that means there is no SP2 update for the recent LNK shortcut vulnerability (KB2286198). If you review the comments from this SANS Diary post, you’ll see that there was some initial confusion regarding SP2 support, due to a typo in Microsoft’s Security Bulletin (MS10-046). The bulletin is now corrected.\nHowever, even today, the download for Windows XP still includes SP2 in the file properties.\n","tags":["hack","Microsoft","Updates","Vulnerability","Windows XP","Security"],"title":"How to Install LNK Update (KB2286198) on Windows XP SP2"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-14T20:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/14/two-steps-away-from-a-free-ipad/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Honestly, how many times have you won free stuff by clicking on links? And no… those spam, trojan, and spyware do not count as free stuff.\nWe recently found a scam that promises a free iPad to application testers. Apparently, the site lures the person into joining an iPad application testing program while the site owner makes profit from SMS fee charges and affiliation programs. To enroll in the program, “testers” are required to complete two steps.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","Apple","scam","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Two Steps Away from a Free iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-14T20:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/14/worried-about-adobes-malware-vulnerability-then-secure-your-adobe-reader/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" It should go without saying that the best way to deal with malware is of course, not to get infected in the first place.\nBeing aware of what products are being targeted by the bad guys may help you as well, so it may be useful to know that at the moment Adobe products are virtually the number one target across the world with millions of PCs being hit by infected Adobe PDFs. Others are being pwned via Adobe Flash ads via Facebook and other social media web sites.\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","solution","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Worried about Adobe's malware vulnerability then secure your Adobe Reader"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-14T20:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/14/my-friend-has-invited-me-to-twitter/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"“What are you doing?\n“To join or to see who invited you, check the attachment.”\nHmmm. That looked interesting. After I clicked on it (in virtual environment), Yahoo renamed the attachment from “Invitation+Card.zip” to “Neutral.gif” and gave a warning:\nNice work Yahoo.\n","tags":["Malware","Social Media","spam","Twitter","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"My “friend” has invited me “to Twitter!”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-13T17:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/13/toy-story-3-woodys-roundup-of-scams-and-fakeouts/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Toy Story 3 is romping across cinemas Worldwide, and rightly so – it’s the best of the series by far. I thought it might be worth pointing out that being a product aimed at children doesn’t exclude it from internet shenanigans.\nIf you have young children online who are partial to searching for Toy Story material, you might want to warn them about some of the below scams. One of the most popular tactics is advertising the “full movie” on Youtube, but directing the end-user to a bunch of surveys instead:\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","spam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Toy Story 3: Woody's Roundup of Scams and Fakeouts"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-08-13T16:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/08/13/whats-in-a-rogue-name-virustotal-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"There is a well-respected and very useful site that everyone in the anti-virus industry uses – sometimes several times a day: Virus Total. You can upload suspicious files or their check sums to Virus Total to see if a file is malicious. The makers of a new rogue have picked up on the Virus Total name in an effort to make their malicious creation look like something legitimate:\nWhat it tries to download is detected as FraudTool.Win32.FakeRean (fs).\nHere’s what the real Virus Total site looks like. It basically runs your code sample or check sum against 41 anti-virus engines and displays the resulting detections.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","rogue software","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"What’s in a (rogue) name? VirusTotal 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-24T23:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/24/a-little-note-to-the-guys-at-eset/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Alert reader Joe Fernandez over at the MalwareUp forum (http://malwareup.org) sent us a tip on this one. He was checking out the scripting in a rogue security product and found a little note to the guys at ESET anti-virus company (which makes ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 referred to below):\nCute!\n","tags":["Fun"],"title":"A little note to the guys at ESET"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-22T23:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/22/facebook-malware-attack-behind-distracting-beach-babes-video/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A Facebook malware attack is on the loose this weekend, enticing users to click a “Distracting Beach Babes” video on their Facebook Walls. The Wall message reads:\n“this is hilarious! lol 😛 😛 😛 Distracting Beach Babes [HQ] Length: 5:32″.\nIf you see this video on Facebook today, do not click the link: Doing so, and downloading a linked file, will result in malware being installed on your computer.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Malware","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Facebook Malware Attack Behind Distracting Beach Babes Video"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-21T14:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/21/warning-on-facebook-worm-fbhole/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"There’s a new Facebook worm out there. However, it doesn’t seem to be doing anything else than posting a message to people’s Facebook walls.\nThe message that the worm posts is\n“try not to laugh xD http://www.fbhole. com/omg/allow.php?s=a\u0026r=[random number]“\nIf you follow the link, you end up to a page looking like this:\nThe page shows a fake error message. If you click anywhere on the page, you will trigger a script that will try to post the same message to your Facebook wall. This is done with an invisible iframe that follows your mouse around – causing you to click on an invisible “publish” button. In addition of the wall message post, nothing else happens.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Malware","Security"],"title":"Warning on Facebook worm \"FBHOLE\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-20T23:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/20/lifelocks-ceo-davis-was-victim-of-id-theft-13-times/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The Phoenix New Times has reported that the CEO of LifeLock ID theft protection service of Tempe, Ariz., has had his identity used by rip-off artists 13 times since 2007.\nCEO Todd Davis advertised his social security number publically to assure customers that his service could protect their identity. The service cost $10-15 per month.\nIn March we blogged the story when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and LifeLock reached a settlement in which the company would pay $12 million – $11 million of which would be refunded to consumers – for fraud.\n","tags":["News","report","review"],"title":"LifeLock’s CEO Davis was victim of ID theft 13 times"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-20T23:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/20/exploding-laptop-battery-dept-hp-widens-recall/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hewlett-Packard has announced it has expanded the May 14, 2009, recall of its laptop battery packs. The company will replace the defective batteries at no cost to customers.\nThe notice on the HP site said “HP and the battery manufacturers believe that certain battery packs shipped in HP notebook PC products manufactured between August 2007 and May 2008 may pose a potential safety hazard to customers. The batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard.\n","tags":["HP","News"],"title":"Exploding laptop battery dept.: HP widens recall"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-20T23:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/20/google-introduces-google-tv-video/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"On the 2nd day at Google I/O 2010 developer event, Google has announced Android 2.2 with Flash along with Google TV, a new technology for television and Internet freaks.\nWatch the Introducing Google TV video below:\n","tags":["Android","Google","News","TV"],"title":"Google Introduces Google TV – Video"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T21:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/xp-sp2-support-ends-july-13/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"If you’ve been squeezing the last bit of value out of that installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 or are continuing to run it because of proprietary software that you’re squeezing the last bit of value out of, well, you only have two more months of squeezing. Microsoft will end support for Service Pack 2 on July 13.\nNow if you can somehow upgrade to Service Pack 3, you can forget about the problem until Microsoft’s Extended Support for XP ends April 8, 2014, assuming the hard drive in that PC you bought in 2001 lasts that long. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t slack off on the backups.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Windows","Windows XP"],"title":"XP (SP2) support ends July 13"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T21:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/the-pirate-bay-to-riaa-we-are-unsinkable/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Yesterday, the Pirate Bay went down following pressure from the RIAA, which threatened to slap TPB’s hosting provider with huge fines.\nWe predicted The Pirate Bay’s downfall ages ago, but it still hasn’t happened. Things have been looking grim for the file-sharing service for a while. First, there was the lawsuit from the entertainment industry that left the Pirate Bay’s team scattered and struggling to stay the course it charted for itself. Then the news that the entire service was to be sold (the sale never happened) to a Swedish Gaming Company seemed to have scattered the Pirate Bay’s fans, too.\n","tags":["Piracy","RIAA","ThePirateBay"],"title":"The Pirate Bay to RIAA: We Are Unsinkable"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T21:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/is-google-building-a-skype-competitor/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google announced today that it has made a cash offer to acquire Global IP Solutions (GIPS).\nA leader in the real-time VoIP processing space for both voice and video, GIPS doesn’t have any consumer-facing products; instead, it provides services that work on the backend for products like Yahoo! Messenger, Citrix and WebEx.\nThis is an interesting acquisition for Google, who already has a number of consumer products that could benefit from GIPS technologies. Not only does GIPS provide voice processing for VoIP calls that could potentially improve gTalk and Google Voice, GIPS also has a large focus on real-time video transmissions, both on the client and mobile side.\nOur first thought when looking at this announcement was that Google could provide some really formidable competition to Skype.\n","tags":["analyze","Global IP Solutions","Google","GTalk","Skype","VOIP","Yahoo"],"title":"Is Google Building a Skype Competitor?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/google-chrome-version-6-in-the-works/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Not one to rest on its laurels, the Google Chrome team is hard at work on Chrome 6. The official move to the 6.0 designation in the Chromium developer builds officially started a few days ago.\nThe move to a Chrome 6 branch for Chromium means that the final tweaks and polishes on Chrome 5 are almost complete. Chrome 5 is a big release — not only is it blazingly fast, it’s also going to be the first stable release for Mac and Linux users.\n","tags":["Browsers","Google","Google Chrome","News"],"title":"Google Chrome Version 6 in the Works"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/prince-of-persia-comes-to-iphone-retro-style/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Right now, the words “Prince of Persia” probably make you think of muscular Jake Gyllenhaal jumping from building to building. The video game the movie is based on, however, is a remake of an ancient platform-style game with the same name, released for Apple II and later ported to PC and other platforms.\nThe original game now seems to be coming to the iPhone under the title Prince of Persia Retro.\n","tags":["Apple","Gaming","Ubisoft"],"title":"Prince of Persia Comes to iPhone, Retro-Style"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/pakistan-blocks-facebook-over-caricatures-of-prophet-muhammad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A Pakistani court has ordered the authorities to temporarily block Facebook due to a contest that calls for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.\nThe court order follows a petition by a group called the Islamic Lawyers’ Movement, which complained that the contest was “blasphemous.” A search on Facebook reveals two sites featuring such caricatures: one supporting Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who created the caricature of the Prophet, published in Danish newspapers in 2005.\n","tags":["Facebook","Social Media","YouTube"],"title":"Pakistan Blocks Facebook Over Caricatures of Prophet Muhammad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/new-canon-portable-scanner-lets-you-scan-directly-to-evernote/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Canon has just released a Mac version of its popular image and document scanner, the imageFORMULA P-150M, complete with built-in support for the popular organizational service Evernote. The small scanner, which Canon calls the “Scan-tini,” lets you quickly scan documents and route them to Evernote automatically.\nThe scanner, which is also available for Windows, uses embedded drivers to start up and scan quickly, effectively decreasing the time it takes to initialize the device. Using what Canon calls CaptureOnTouch, documents can be routed automatically to apps like iPhoto or Evernote. This can be really useful, especially for business users who want to have a way to easily scan and upload lots of documents quickly.\n","tags":["Canon","Evernote"],"title":"New Canon Portable Scanner Lets You Scan Directly to Evernote"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/yahoo-acquires-an-army-of-380000-freelance-journalists-with-associated-content-buy/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Yesterday, Yahoo! Inc. announced it would be acquiring Associated Content Inc., and the transaction would cost the search company an estimated $100 million.\nAssociated Content calls itself the “People’s Media Company,” and is a media outlet consisting of more than 380,000 freelancers publishing news, photos, video, and other content on subjects chosen by the site.\n“Combining our world-class editorial team with Associated Content’s makes this a game-changer,” said Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo! Inc. “Together, we’ll create more content around what we know our users care about, and open up new and creative avenues for advertisers to engage with consumers across our network. These are important aspects of building engaging consumer experiences on Yahoo!, and one of the reasons why we’re one of the most visited destinations online.”\n","tags":["Microsoft","Search","Yahoo"],"title":"Yahoo acquires an army of 380,000 freelance journalists with Associated Content buy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/skype-5-0-beta-brings-five-way-video-chat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Video chatting is on the rise. Yesterday, we got to take a look at Qik’s mobile video chat client for the Sprint EVO 4G, and today, we get to take a look at Skype’s latest development: five-way video chat.\nToday, popular VoIP and chat client Skype launched a beta of Skype 5.0 for Windows, which includes a free trial of group video calling, a re-designed call view window, improved video snapshots gallery, and improved browser plugin performance.\n","tags":["News","Skype"],"title":"Skype 5.0 beta brings five-way video chat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/google-oops-our-street-view-cars-also-saw-websites-you-were-visiting/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google today said it will stop collecting Wi-Fi network data from its Street View cars, after an investigation from the German Data Protection Authority (DPA) found the search company was also collecting personal data about user behavior on these public hotspots.\nGoogle’s Street View cars weren’t only taking 360-degree images of our streets for use on Google Maps, but they were also pulling publicly broadcast SSID and MAC information from Wi-Fi hotspots.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google: Oops…our Street View cars also saw websites you were visiting"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/google-announces-open-app-store-for-installable-web-apps/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has announced the upcoming availability of the Chrome Web Store, an open marketplace similar to the Android Market or iTunes App Store that deals exclusively in Web Apps.\nThis store doesn’t exist yet, but will open both to developers and to users “later this year.”\nThe store will deal in the “installable Web apps,” that are expected to populate both the Google Chrome browser and the forthcoming Chrome OS. They can be run currently, but require a Windows Dev channel release of Google Chrome with a special command line flag.\n","tags":["Announcement","Google","News"],"title":"Google announces open app store for ‘Installable Web apps'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/russian-isp-hosting-zbot-cc-servers-is-taken-down/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Russian-based PROXIEZ-NET, which was known to allegedly host 13 Zbot command-and-control servers has been shut down by its upstream provider DIGERNET, according to the site The New New Internet (News story on Web Host Review here: “Alleged Russian Malware Host Cut Off By Upstream Provider”)\nLegitimate web sites hosted by PROXIEZ-NET many have been caught in the takedown, the Review said.\nBrick House Security said the Zbot-related servers on PROXIEZ-NET were used to collect PayPal, EBay and online banking passwords stolen by key logging malware.\n","tags":["Malware","News","Security"],"title":"Russian ISP hosting Zbot C\u0026C servers is taken down"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/facebook-says-it-will-make-privacy-settings-easier/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The All Facebook blog (not an official Facebook site) is reporting that Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani has said the company will install privacy settings that are easier to understand and control in the next few weeks. (“Facebook Preparing To Release Simple Privacy Settings” )\nThe 800-pound gorilla of the social media world has been taking increasing heat recently about its sloppy attitude toward securing users personal information and privacy policy that seems to permit it to do nearly anything with users personal info..\n","tags":["Facebook","News","privacy","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook says it will make privacy settings easier"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T20:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/seo-poisoning-rima-fakih-photos/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"You might avoid looking for photos of Miss USA Rima Fakih for a while. There is a controversy about a certain pole-dancing incident in her past that is stirring up the talk show circuits and the adolescent inside every male on the planet. It also has stirred up a massive number of SEO poisoned links to photos.\nIn 2007, Fakih won a “Stripper 101” contest sponsored by a Detroit radio show “Mojo in the Morning.” And, of course, she was no sooner crowned Miss USA than somebody resurrected the “Stripper 101” video. And, of course, everybody is searching for “Rima Fakih pole dancing.”\n","tags":["advice","alert","hack","Malware","Search","SEO","Security"],"title":"SEO poisoning: Rima Fakih photos"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/flash-forward-can-adobe-leave-apple-behind-in-the-dust/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" Flash, sharply rejected by Jobs and Company, has moved on to Apple’s competitors, hoping for a warm welcome and the promise of a place in the mobile market. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ recent open letter deploring Adobe’s Flash managed to do little in terms of settling the argument as to who was right in the debate, it did point out many of the problems with the oft-buggy software that may indeed plague the smartphone experience.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Flash"],"title":"Flash forward: Can Adobe leave Apple behind in the dust?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/myspace-revamps-privacy-settings-to-counter-facebooks-muddled-set-of-options/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook grew more popular than Myspace just about two years ago, and has been been enjoying steady growth while MySpace flounders trying to reinvent itself.\nBut the recent attention brought to Facebook’s privacy issues -specifically the complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission by EPIC pointing out that Facebook data isn’t as private as it once was- has opened a door for MySpace to jam its foot into.\nThe New York Times last week called Facebook’s privacy settings “A bewildering tangle of options,” with 50 settings menus with more than 170 options, and a privacy statement more than 1,200 words longer than the U.S. Constitution.\n","tags":["Facebook","MySpace","Social Media"],"title":"MySpace revamps privacy settings to counter Facebook's muddled set of options"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/if-you-think-facebook-privacy-is-so-bad-the-open-web-is-worse/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"It seems like anyone who wants to be anybody is whacking Facebook over its loose — or rather loosening — privacy policies. Earlier this month, with disregard to the grammer momma taught me, Even I whacked CEO Mark Zuckerberg aside the head about Facebook privacy. As bad as pundits make out Facebook privacy to be, people can, and do, reveal plenty of information on the Web, too. Which place do they reveal more? I set out to find out in a non-scientific experiment, looking for publicly available information about one of my sisters.\n","tags":["Facebook","Open Web","privacy","review"],"title":"If you think Facebook privacy is so bad, the open Web is worse"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/new-hotmail-lets-you-add-bigger-attachments-organize-your-inbox-edit-documents/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I’m constantly reminded how slow email actually is.\nOn the homescreen of one of my smartphones, I’ve got the official Twitter widget and the official Facebook widget which are pretty much constantly refreshing. Likewise, my email inbox is set to refresh just as frequently. Every day, when someone sends me a message in Facebook or replies to a Tweet, the widgets tell me first, and then five minutes later I get the email alerting me again. Because of this, I have an email account just for social network updates that is overflowing with unread messages.\n","tags":["Hotmail","Email","Microsoft","News"],"title":"New Hotmail lets you add bigger attachments, organize your inbox, edit documents"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/amazon-announces-kindle-for-android-a-new-hope-dawns-for-android-tablets-against-the-ipad/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Kindle is, without a doubt, the highest profile e-reader platform running. With applications on iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows, and OS X as well as its own line of e-paper Kindle devices, Amazon had an estimated 90% share of the e-book sales market last year.\nToday, Amazon announced that a Kindle app will be launched on the Android mobile operating system this summer.\nLike the BlackBerry app, Android users will be able to purchase Amazon e-books inside the mobile app. That functionality is noticeably absent on the iPhone and iPad versions, where users must go to the browser to download new books.\n","tags":["Amazon","Android","Announcement","Apple"],"title":"Amazon announces Kindle for Android, a new hope dawns for Android tablets against the iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/data-google-skimmed-with-street-view-cars-gets-destroyed-in-ireland-but-thats-not-good-enough-for-germany/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Last Friday, Google announced that its Street View cars had accidentally collected private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks while making their rounds, and the international response began in full force.\nThe same day, the Irish Data Protection Authority asked Google to delete all of that payload that was collected in Ireland. Yesterday, Google wrote, “We can confirm that all data identified as being from Ireland was deleted over the weekend in the presence of an independent third party. We are reaching out to Data Protection Authorities in the other relevant countries about how to dispose of the remaining data as quickly as possible.”\n","tags":["Google"],"title":"Data Google skimmed with street view cars gets destroyed in Ireland, but that's not good enough for Germany"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/ipad-isnt-for-everyone-so-deal-with-it/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Thirty-two days ago, I purchased Apple’s iPad, after proclaiming that I wouldn’t. A gadget like this one should be tested if repeatedly blogged about. I would have used a for-reviews loaner, but I’m on the same fraked list as Gizmodo. I bought my own. A month-or-so usage later, I agree with Tumblr and Instapaper developer Marco Arment, who asked about iPad yesterday: “What’s it for, really? Logically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for most computer owners…most people will have trouble justifying the $500 entry price.”\n","tags":["Apple","report","review","YouTube"],"title":"iPad isn't for everyone, so deal with it"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-19T14:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/19/bogus-is-one-way-to-describe-microsofts-patent-claims-against-salesforce-com/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Three words sum up Microsoft’s patent infringement suit against Salesforce.com: Competition by litigation. Microsoft knows plenty about competition by litigation, having been its victim through major antitrust cases on two continents. It’s simply shameful action from a company which executies rightly wagged accusing fingers at litigating competitors over the years. Microsoft’s “do unto them like they did unto us” approach cheapens the company. The proof is in the patents, which are hugely broad scope.\n","tags":["Apple","Microsoft","News"],"title":"Bogus is one way to describe Microsoft's patent claims against Salesforce.com"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T22:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/patch-tuesday-minor-movements/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hey Admins…. It’s that time again. The second Tuesday is upon us and May so far hasn’t been demanding as far as patching goes.\nSo far …. this month Microsoft has only issued two security announcements. MS10-030 and MS10-031. Microsoft has rated both as critical – and both could result in remote code being executed.\nMS10-030 resolves an integer overflow in POP3 \u0026 IMAP mail responses to Outlook Express and Windows Mail…. MS10-031 addresses a stack memory corruption related to the way that “Visual Basic for Applications” searches for ActiveX components, when host applications provide specially crafted files to the Visual Basic runtime.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Windows","Security"],"title":"Patch Tuesday – Minor movements…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T22:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/wordpress-and-php-based-management-systems-under-attack/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A variety of sources are reporting that blog hosting sites with WordPress-created sites and php-based management systems such as Zen Care eCommerce are being infected with malicious scripts.\nWebsites hosted by ISP DreamHost, GoDaddy, Bluehost and Media Temple have been found with the malcode, according to H-Online.com.\nThe malicious scripts download malcode and block Google’s Safe Browsing API from alerting users.\nStory here: “Large-scale attack on WordPress”\nThe Sucuri Security blog has offered clean-up instructions for those with infected pages here.\n","tags":["advice","alert","hack","PHP","report","WordPress","Security"],"title":"WordPress and PHP-based management systems under attack?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T21:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/mozilla-turns-up-the-fire-firefox-4-betas-to-begin-in-june/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":" With competition in the Web browser field having transitioned from cold to boiling in less than a year’s time, Mozilla suddenly finds itself playing catch-up against not only Apple and Google, but Microsoft as well. In March, the organization realized it needed to completely make over Firefox 4 if it wanted to remain feature competitive against a fast-rising Google Chrome.\nIn a live presentation yesterday, Mozilla Firefox director Mike Beltzner admitted that his group’s March roadmap, which involved an interim release of Firefox 3.7, had too many steps. Now the group has decided to straighten out its path by grafting version 3.7’s main additions onto a point release Firefox 3.6.4, and shifting gears to focus on version 4.0.\n","tags":["Announcement","Apple","Beta","Browsers","Firefox","Firefox 4.0","Mozilla","report","review"],"title":"Mozilla turns up the fire, Firefox 4 betas to begin in June"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T21:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/could-twitter-data-replace-opinion-polls-study/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" A new study from Carnegie Mellon University shows that analyzing data from Twitter yields the same results as conducting a public opinion poll.\nWe’re willing to bet it probably costs less, takes less time and annoys fewer people, as well.\nA CMU team from the computer science department looked at sentiments expressed in a billion Twitter messages between 2008 and 2009. The researchers then use simple text analysis methods to filter out updates about the economy and politics and determine if the overall sentiment of the update was positive or negative. The CMU team found that people’s attitudes on consumer confidence and presidential job approval were similar to the results generated by well-reputed, telephone-conducted public opinion polls, such as those conducted by Reuters, Gallup and pollster.com.\n","tags":["poll","study","Twitter"],"title":"Could Twitter Data Replace Opinion Polls? [STUDY]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T21:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/facebooks-social-plugins-now-on-100000-sites/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Despite ongoing questions about privacy, Facebook’s new social plugins continue to expand their footprint across the web, with the company announcing on Tuesday that more than 100,000 websites have now deployed them.\nThe plugins –- which allow websites to add Facebook-powered social features without requiring users to log in –- were announced less than a month ago at Facebook’s developer conference, and attracted more than 50,000 publishers in the first week.\n","tags":["Facebook","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook’s Social Plugins Now on 100,000+ Sites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T21:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/playboy-to-publish-naked-3d-centerfold/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" “What would people most like to see in 3D? Probably a naked lady.” Those are the words of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, whose magazine will soon include a centerfold playmate photographed naked and in 3D.\nThe 3D centerfold will appear in the June issue, which hits newsstands this Friday with 3D glasses included. The subject of the photos is 51st Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk.\nConsider this a grab for attention more than anything; Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek was quoted by MSNBC saying, “In today’s print environment you have to create newsstand events.” The environment he’s talking about is one in which Playboy circulation has dropped almost 60% in just four years.\n","tags":["3D","hugh hefner","Magazine","Nudity","PlayBoy","Publishing","Sex"],"title":"Playboy to Publish Naked 3D Centerfold"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T21:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/foursquare-tries-to-show-you-more-relevant-places/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Foursquare is moving to make the list of “Places” one sees when one loads one’s mobile app of choice more relevant.\nThe company announced this morning that it has recently made changes to improve its algorithms for serving up this data, taking into account things like time of day, proximity, and popularity of the venue in determining which places to show you.\nThis should be a welcome change for users of Foursquare. As the service has taken off in popularity, it’s also seen an increase in venues that “you are very unlikely to check into” –- Foursquare’s words for the abundance of user-created venues popping up that are only relevant to a small number of people (if anyone, “Ostrow Castle” not withstanding).\n","tags":["foursquare"],"title":"Foursquare Tries to Show You More Relevant “Places”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T21:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/facebook-gets-a-useful-unofficial-ipad-app/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" We need a native iPad app for Facebook but until Facebook HQ gets around to making one, the next best thing has just arrived via social media aggregator sobees.\nsobees for Facebook [iTunes link] is an iPad app that lets you manage your Facebook experience in a native app designed to take advantage of the iPad’s enlarged screen.\nThe app, which is free through the end of May, provides many of the features that Facebook fans have been looking for in an iPad app. This includes the ability to:\n","tags":["Facebook","Apple","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook Gets a Useful Unofficial iPad App"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T20:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/celebritweets-theater-brings-the-melodramas-of-twitter-to-life-video/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" We know, we know — you don’t give a damn about celebrities and what they’re tweeting about (neither do we — especially when they’re narcissistically freaking out about a Twitter bug that everyone was victim to), but when someone does something creative with these 140-character pearls of not-quite-wisdom, we’re admittedly amused. Enter, “Celebritweets Theater.”\nWe’re already fans of Odessa Begay’s inspired “Museum of Modern Tweets,” in which the artist composes surrealistic pictures of the strange things famous people say. “Celebritweets Theater” is basically a horse of the same color — short cartoons that tell the story behind the tweet. A dude that goes by “KCS Cougar” draws these cartoons for celebrity news site Wonderwall, and they have a rather Dr. Katz-esque vibe. I’ve embedded my favorite — which mocks Lady Gaga — below.\n","tags":["humor","pop culture","viral video","web video"],"title":"Celebritweets Theater Brings the Melodramas of Twitter to Life [VIDEO]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T20:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/credit-card-scanner-square-comes-to-iphone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Square is a mobile credit card transaction application founded by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame. The app became available for the iPad about one month ago, and now it’s also available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices.\nThe app is free, but in order to work, you need a small credit card reader that connects to the iPhone via the 2.5mm headphone jack. The app looks beautiful and has lots of nifty features, such as SMS receipts, the ability to track of your sales online, as well as tip and tax calculation. However, in its current iteration it also has certain drawbacks; for example, you cannot delete or refund transactions.\n","tags":["credit cards","Apple","Square"],"title":"Credit Card Scanner Square Comes to iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T20:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/what-about-the-wimax-networks-that-arent-sprintclearwire/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"With Clearwire and Sprint pushing for mobile WiMAX coverage in 80 U.S. markets by the end of 2010, and promising three new WiMAX-powered smartphones in the near future, it’s easy to lose sight of the wireless technology as a solution for rural residential broadband.\nToday, Kansas Broadband Internet (KBI) announced it is moving ahead with the construction of its own WiMAX network with PureWave as the exclusive hardware provider. The finished network will cover 18 counties, and more than 12,000 square miles. With only 33 residents per square mile, Kansas is one of the United States’ ten least densely populated states.\n","tags":["report","review","WiMax"],"title":"What about the WiMAX networks that aren't Sprint/Clearwire?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T20:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/blippy-competitor-swipely-raises-7-5m-in-funding/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Macro Monday Theme: Life is Hard\nCredit cards and debt make life hard. It seems so easy at the time, but after time, you realize what a mistake it is. Strobist: Canon 430ex II at 1/4 power through a softbox camera left. Triggered with a Cactus V4.”\nMacro Monday Theme: Life is HardCredit cards and debt make life hard. It seems so easy at the time, but after time, you realize what a mistake it is.Strobist: Canon 430ex II at 1/4 power through a softbox camera left. Triggered with a Cactus V4.”\n","tags":["startup","funding-and-scaling","privacy","Social Media"],"title":"Blippy Competitor Swipely Raises $7.5M in Funding"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T20:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/like-google-and-nokia-microsoft-starts-to-offer-free-navigation-for-its-phones/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google began offering free turn-by-turn navigation with Android 2.0 in late 2009, and Nokia announced at the beginning of 2010 that Ovi Maps navigation would be free on all its future handsets. Today Microsoft announced that it is following suit with free turn-by-turn navigation for Windows 6.x and up phones, powered by Bing Maps.\nWhen getting directions with Bing, there will now be a “Navigate” button which starts the turn-by-turn voice navigation. The voice navigation feature was developed by the Microsoft Tellme team.\n","tags":["Google","HTC","Map","Microwave","Mobile","Navigation","Nokia","T-Mobile"],"title":"Like Google and Nokia, Microsoft starts to offer free navigation for its phones"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T17:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/virtualization-and-the-cloud-team-up-vmware-with-salesforce-com/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Last week, VMware and Salesforce.com announced a new partnership around VMforce, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering aimed at enterprise Java developers. The companies’ CEOs Paul Maritz (VMware) and Marc Benioff (Salesforce) described VMforce as an enterprise cloud designed to serve the needs of more than six million enterprise Java developers, including some two million who are using the Spring framework VMware acquired last August when it purchased SpringSource.\n","tags":["Cloud","Cloud Computing","News","Virtualization","VMware"],"title":"Virtualization and the cloud team up: VMware with Salesforce.com"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T17:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/first-non-latin-international-domain-names-finally-launch/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The first significant change to Internet domain names in many years was made today when ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved and deployed three domain names using a non-Latin script: Arabic.\nYou can already visit http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/ and two other Arabic script domain names, though they might not display correctly if your browser doesn’t have IDN (International Domain Name) support.\nUsing Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3 and Google Chrome Developer Build 5.0.375.29 for Mac, I was able to visit that web address but it displayed incorrectly in the address bar. When I visited the site in Apple Safari 4.0.5, it was written out correctly.\n","tags":["Apple","arabic","Domain","Domain Names","ICANN","IDN","international domain names"],"title":"First Non-Latin, International Domain Names Finally Launch"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T17:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/google-goggles-now-translates-text-in-photos/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" In February we learned that a future version of Google Googles would translate text in photos. The future is here — Google Goggles v.1.1 for Android 1.6 and higher can now read and translate English, French, Italian, German and Spanish language text.\nThe Google Goggles translation feature is pretty simple to use. Simply point-and-shot a word or phrase by drawing a box around desired text and snapping a photo. Should Google recognize the text, you can then select the translate button and define the source and destination languages for translation.\n","tags":["Android","Goggles","Google","translate"],"title":"Google Goggles Now Translates Text in Photos"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T17:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/facebook-status-updates-show-which-countries-are-happiest/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Facebook has extended its “Gross National Happiness” prototype app to 18 new countries. The app analyzes words in status updates like “awesome” or “tragic” to track changes in the collective emotional state of its users.\nWhen Facebook applied the methods to its U.S. userbase last year, it found that happiness went way up on holidays and way down when celebrities like Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger passed away. While the results of the study weren’t surprising, the idea of using status updates to measure national happiness was a novel one.\n","tags":["Facebook","gross national happiness","Social Media","status updates","study","trending"],"title":"Facebook Status Updates Show Which Countries Are Happiest"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T17:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/facebook-adding-location-features-this-month-report/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Information has leaked that Facebook is set to roll out location-based features for users and brands as soon as this month. According to Advertising Age, users could see location options any day now.\nThese features include the ability to check in at various locations, including retail spots and restaurants. We’re unclear as to whether users will be able to add or customize their own locations, but we are fairly positive that this move will put Foursquare, Brightkite, Gowalla and other location-based services in an uncomfortable position.\n","tags":["Facebook","locations","News","report","trending"],"title":"Facebook Adding Location Features This Month [REPORT]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T16:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/the-first-international-non-latin-top-level-domains-go-live/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has finally begun to enable top-level domain names based on non-Latin alphabets. The first three country code top level domains (ccTLD) written in Arabic script are now available for use.\nThe three new top-level domains are: “Al-Saudiah,” “Emarat, and “Misr,” and they allow site names to be written right-to-left.\nICANN began testing internationalized domain name (IDN) back in the Fall of 2006, and tested 11 languages — Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"The first international non-Latin top level domains go live"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T16:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/more-fallout-at-digg-10-of-staff-laid-off/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Social news site Digg has just laid off 10% of its staff according to a representative from the company. The move comes a month after Jay Adelson’s sudden departure as CEO, in which he was replaced by company founder Kevin Rose.\nRose writes in an e-mail to employees: “This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for the long-term health of the company. In order to achieve our goals, we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and development efforts.”\n","tags":["digg","layoffs"],"title":"More Fallout at Digg: 10% of Staff Laid Off"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T16:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/steve-jobs-on-ipad-printing-it-will-come/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Lately, it’s not that hard to get a direct answer to your query from Steve Jobs himself; he responds to burning questions via e-mail quite often.\nUnfortunately, his answers rarely contain more than a few words. Macrumors reports that a reader asked Steve Jobs via e-mail why the iPad cannot print documents. Steve’s answer? “It will come.”\nEven if we disregard the possibility that the e-mail may be fake, Steve’s answer gives us very little to be happy about as we have no idea when printing to the iPad will come. Will it come this summer? When the next version arrives? Sometime in the next decade? We’re optimists, so we’ll just pretend that Steve meant “soon.”\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"Steve Jobs on iPad Printing: It Will Come"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T16:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/wi-fi-at-60-ghz-will-be-10-times-faster/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance have reached an agreement to set up standards for Wi-Fi to operate in the previously unclaimed 60 GHz frequency band, which would offer up to 10 times faster data transfer speeds. Currently, Wi-Fi operates in the 2.4 GHz an 5 GHz frequency bands.\n”The 60-GHz band allows for significant boost in performance, so we are talking about speeds in the gigabits per second range,” says the executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, Edgar Figueroa.\n","tags":["review","WiFi","wireless networking"],"title":"Wi-Fi at 60 GHz Will Be 10 Times Faster"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T15:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/international-ipad-pre-orders-are-live/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Just as Apple promised last week, international iPad pre-orders are underway as of today.\nCustomers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK can pre-order the iPad from their respective Apple stores; the actual device is slated to ship on May 28.\nAs you can see, the prices are quite a bit higher in the UK than in the U.S. but, unfortunately, European customers are already used to paying a premium for Apple products.\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"International iPad Pre-Orders Are Live"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T15:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/foursquare-exceeds-40-million-checkins/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Location-based social network Foursquare counted its 40 millionth checkin a “couple days ago,” according to a tweet from one of its developers.\nThe number shows that Foursquare’s growth rate is accelerating: Five weeks ago, the company announced that the total number of checkins had reached 22 million. In short: Foursquare appears to have doubled its checkin rate in just over a month.\nIt’s just over two weeks, meanwhile, since Foursquare hit the million user mark. What’s more, recent acquisition rumors have driven Foursquare hype to new levels.\n","tags":["foursquare","locations","trending","Twitter"],"title":"Foursquare Exceeds 40 Million Checkins"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T15:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/android-now-outselling-iphone-report/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Smartphones carrying Google’s Android operating system outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010, according to new research out today from NPD.\nDuring the quarter, Android handsets accounted for 28% of Smartphone sales, beating out iPhone OS and its 21% share. BlackBerry was the bestselling OS, with its devices capturing 36% of the market. NPD attributes the shift to strong sales of the Motorola Droid and Droid Eris.\nThe news follows a report last month from AdMob that showed Android’s share of the mobile OS market had actually grown past that of iPhone OS, at least in the U.S. Worldwide, iPhone OS still has a big lead, however, with 46% share compared to Android’s 25%. AdMob’s data is based on ad requests across mobile websites and applications.\n","tags":["Android","Apple","BlackBerry","Google","News","report","Smartphone","trending"],"title":"Android Now Outselling iPhone [REPORT]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T15:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/wigig-publishes-7-gbps-wireless-home-networking-spec/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Exactly one year after making its public debut, the Wireless Gigabit Alliance has published its spec for the unlicensed 60 GHz band, which it is pushing as a new, faster standard for home networking.\nThe 60 GHz WiGig spec is not meant to be a replacement to current 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi technologies, but instead to act as a complement that is targeted to devices requiring gigabit speeds, like HD video. While the new spec supports data transfer rates up to 7 Gbps, the high absorption of 60 GHz waves make it suitable only for short-distance communication.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"WiGig publishes 7 Gbps wireless home networking spec"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/facebook-board-members-account-hacked/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Even Facebook board members are not immune to phishing attacks. On Saturday, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners became the latest victim when his account was used to send a spam message to more than 2,300 friends.\nThe message in question (see below) came in the form of an event invitation reading, “Would You Like a Facebook Phone Number?” and included an RSVP link.\nThe phishing scam prompted individuals who clicked on the faulty link to enter their login credentials, which then caused their accounts to be hacked in the same manner.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","Social Media"],"title":"Facebook Board Member’s Account Hacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/firefox-4-plans-faster-friendlier-more-secure/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Almost one year ago, we’ve gotten a glimpse of the next major iteration of Firefox, at least when it comes to its gorgeous new visuals.\nNow, however, Mozilla’s Mike Beltzner has shared a presentation that reveals quite detailed plans for Firefox 4. HTML5 and CSS support are mentioned, as well as faster operation, a greater focus on security and stability, new developer tools, and a lot of personalization options. Furthermore, from the screenshots embedded in the presentation, we can see that the visuals from one year ago haven’t changed much, although most menu items (the home button, for example) are positioned differently.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Firefox 4.0"],"title":"Firefox 4 Plans: Faster, Friendlier, More Secure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/ibm-debuts-new-social-media-analytics-tool/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Today, IBM is introducing a new social media monitoring tool, one that it says will measure consumer sentiment from data gathered on Twitter, blogs and other web services and networks.\nThe software, called the SPSS Modeler data mining and text analytics workbench, will use natural language processing (NLP) to analyze everything from product names and industry jargon to slang and emoticons, and it’s already being used by some pretty big businesses.\n","tags":["IBM","MARKETING","social media analytics","social media monitoring","Social Media"],"title":"IBM Debuts New Social Media Analytics Tool"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/feds-in-u-s-announce-30-convictions-for-143-m-in-counterfeit-cisco-hardware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that federal agencies have made 700 seizures of counterfeit Cisco hardware worth more than $143 million in the last five years. The investigations resulted in the conviction of 30 people in an initiative targeting the illegal distribution of counterfeit network hardware manufactured in China. Nine other individuals are awaiting trial and eight are awaiting sentencing.\nThe agencies involved in the investigations include the FBI’s Cyber Division U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Feds in U.S. announce 30 convictions for $143 M in counterfeit Cisco hardware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/surveys-young-adults-getting-more-privacy-aware-on-internet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The University of California, Berkeley, has found that more than half young adults have become more aware of Internet privacy issues than they were five years ago. That number is similar to Internet users their parents’ age or older.\n“In its telephone survey of 1,000 people, the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California found that 88 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds it surveyed last July said there should be a law that requires Web sites to delete stored information. And 62 percent said they wanted a law that gave people the right to know everything a Web site knows about them.”\n","tags":["News","privacy","report","review","Social Media","survey"],"title":"Surveys: young adults getting more privacy-aware on Internet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/apple-confirms-att-has-iphone-exclusivity-until-2012/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" It was speculative before given the lack of independent confirmation, but now apparently Apple has gone on record to confirm that the original deal signed with AT\u0026T for iPhone exclusivity back in 2007 was a five-year deal. That means at least some legal hoops would need jumping through if we’re ever going to see that oft-rumored Verizon iPhone before 2012.\nEngadget reports that court documents filed by Apple in a California class-action suit confirm the original AT\u0026T exclusivity deal had a five-year duration. The suit, ongoing since 2007, claims that Apple and AT\u0026T were exerting a monopoly over iPhone service by surreptitiously locking iPhone buyers into renewing contracts with AT\u0026T once their initial two years was up.\n","tags":["Apple","exclusivity","Mobile 2.0","trending","verizon","Verizon iPhone"],"title":"Apple Confirms AT\u0026T Has iPhone Exclusivity Until 2012"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/sprint-drops-plan-to-offer-googles-nexus-one/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Although Google announced only last month that Sprint would carry its Nexus One phone, the carrier has since retracted from that plan.\nGizmodo reports that the carrier will instead focus its efforts on the upcoming HTC EVO 4G it will be launching this summer. Both devices are Android phones, but the EVO is arguably more full-featured and will take advantage of Sprint’s 4G network — the next-generation cellular service that will be more akin to true mobile broadband with faster speeds than current 3G networks.\n","tags":["Android","droid incredible","Google","HTC","nexus one","sprint","verizon"],"title":"Sprint Drops Plan to Offer Google’s Nexus One"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/att-verizon-stand-against-fccs-third-way-sprint-on-the-fence/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":" With Congress’ dance card already overflowing with major social and policy reforms, including in the financial sector, the likelihood that it could pass a major reform to the Telecommunications Act for Internet regulation during the Obama Administration (however long it lasts) is quite low. Faced with a pair of no-win scenarios, the FCC last week opted to propose a “Third Way” for broadband regulation that could at least get its foot back in the door — a way that literally asks judges and attorneys-general to substitute “telephone” for “broadband” in various clauses of existing law, except for those sections where doing so wouldn’t make any sense.\n","tags":["Mobile","Business","News","report"],"title":"AT\u0026T, Verizon stand against FCC's ‘Third Way,' Sprint on the fence"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/maxed-out-in-financial-software-intuit-jumps-into-healthcare-with-91m-buy-of-medfusion/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Last week, we took a look at Mint’s new app for Android, which lets users track their finances and budget on their mobile device in a safe, read-only app. Mint.com was acquired by Intuit Software in late 2009, meshing the free, Web-based personal finance service with Intuit’s portfolio of financial, accounting, and budgeting services.\nToday, Intuit announced it is expanding further into online healthcare services with its acquisition of North Carolina company Medfusion for an estimated $91 million in cash.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Maxed out in financial software, Intuit jumps into healthcare with $91m buy of Medfusion"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/showtime-subscribers-might-get-online-tv-service/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Premium cable TV channel Showtime plans to launch a service that will stream episodes of original series like Weeds, The Tudors and Californication to subscribers, a source told Bloomberg Businessweek.\nDetails about the new service are scarce, but the network is reportedly discussing the plans with the cable operators that distribute its channels, who are undoubtedly concerned that an online service will cut into revenues for traditional cable TV distribution.\n","tags":["cable","on-demand","Showtime","streaming","television","TV","Video","web series"],"title":"Showtime Subscribers Might Get Online TV Service"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/skype-to-introduce-ads/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" As Skype prepares to roll out five-way video calling this week — an addition the company plans to charge for at a later date — it’s also thinking of monetizing the now free user-to-user web calling serving with advertisements.\nIn an interview with The Telegraph, CEO Josh Silverman explains that the company — once again its own entity — is challenged by its desire to keep Skype-to-Skype calls free and to maintain the quality of service. As a result, the Skype team is “seriously considering” including ads from third parties in order to continue to operate the service free of charge.\n","tags":["analyze","MARKETING","Skype"],"title":"Skype to Introduce Ads?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T14:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/the-semantic-web-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters-video/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" If you’ve ever struggled to make sense of terms like “semantic web,” we’ve got a fascinating, entertaining and informative video for you.\nThe Internet currently holds about as much information as 1,700 Libraries of Congress. Some of the leading minds on the web are exploring new ways to sort this data and how to understand not just what data is about, but also how data is linked.\nFor example, a picture on Flickr is more than just a number of pixels and a file size. It was uploaded by a person and might contain images of other people. It might have been taken in a specific place or be about a specific moment in time. Those bits of information link that photograph to other entities: people, places, things and events. When we know how data is linked and we use that information to determine relevancy across media and sources, we’re using the semantic web.\n","tags":["Documentary","Film","Video","Web 3.0"],"title":"The Semantic Web: What It Is and Why It Matters [VIDEO]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T13:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/new-macbook-air-might-arrive-tomorrow-rumor/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" According to Australian Macworld, a new version of the MacBook Air may show up in the Apple Online Store tomorrow morning. The same source who correctly predicted the MacBook Pro refresh last month alerted Australian Macworld of a new Apple product number in the Apple database.\nThe product number, MC516LL/A K87 BETTER BTR-USA, suggests that it is a Mac product (the “BETTER” nomenclature is the big clue there, as it often refers to the different tiers of Mac products). As AppleInsider also notes, it is possible that the number could refer to a new Apple Cinema Display, one that is 27″ and matches that of the 27″ iMac, but we’d place our bets on a new MacBook Air.\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"New MacBook Air Might Arrive Tomorrow [RUMOR]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T13:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/wordpress-3-0-the-5-most-important-new-features/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":"Brian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam.\nWordPress has long been known as a dedicated blogging platform, giving users the tools they need to publish their message and interact with readers. However, with the official release of version 3.0, set to drop this month, the platform will be much closer, if not well within the territory of a content management system (CMS).\n","tags":["Blogging","BLOGS","Tech","Web Design","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress 3.0: The 5 Most Important New Features"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T13:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/what-does-php-stand-for-probable-hacked-page/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Late last week, the wires were buzzing over news that the official site of PHP-Nuke “Professional Content Management System“ was serving malware. I am frankly amazed to see the site still infected 4 days later.\nWe see hacked sites everyday and the majority are running PHP-driven applications such as Content Management Systems (CMS). The PHP-Nuke site is currently running PHP v. 5.2.9.\nServer: Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.2.9\n","tags":["hack","Malware","PHP","report","review","Security"],"title":"What does PHP stand for? Probable Hacked Page?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T13:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/microsofts-project-natal-to-launch-in-october/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal is a full-body motion controller, promising an incredibly immersive gaming experience and biting into the market first tapped by Nintendo Wii, back in 2006.\nNow, Project Natal was all but confirmed for October launch by Microsoft Saudi marketing manager Syed Bilal Tariq in an interview with GamertagRadio. “It is going to be somewhere in October. We will be in a position to confirm the date at E3, which is in June, but definitely it is going to be October 2010,” he said.\n","tags":["Gaming","Microsoft"],"title":"Microsoft’s Project Natal to Launch in October"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-11T13:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/11/whoops-twitter-got-hacked-again/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I had a look at my twitter page early this morning and read “Twitter is a rich source of insanity”, and thought “Wow, the twitter marketroids are really bold, but it’s a good line.” Upon re-reading, however, I realized that what it really said was “Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information.” It might, however, have been a Freudian slip, because twitter got hacked yesterday, and bunches of celebs found they had been forced to follow the hacker. Even worse, as it struggled to right the ship, twitter temporarily removed their followers, and celebs found themselves in the traumatic position of being unpopular, at least for a while.\n","tags":["advice","hack","report","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Whoops – Twitter got hacked again"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T14:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/notetaking-tool-evernote-reaches-3-million-user-mark/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Demand for Evernote’s notetaking tool is growing at an ever increasing rate. The startup has just surpassed three million users, which means the company has attracted over one million new users in four months and that growth is rapidly accelerating.\nEvernote is now registering 8,000 new users per day — no doubt with the help of its fantastic iPad app. The company also points to international interest as well as partner referrals as drivers of growth.\n","tags":["Evernote","Apple","News","Notetaking","report","stats"],"title":"Notetaking Tool Evernote Reaches 3 Million User Mark"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T14:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/how-to-know-whether-your-iphone-has-new-or-old-bootroom/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Jailbreaking and Unlocking with iPhone is fun, but these days apple is trying to make people life harder by introducing new changes in iPhone hardware and software which could stop or prevent people from jailbreaking their devices.\nOne of the change done by apple is the fix they had done in iPhone 3GS bootroom, they have fixed the potential bug found in old iPhone device which allows to unlock the iPhone to use a different carrier. There is no tool which can unlock an iPhone with new bootroom. Now the question arise here, how could one know whether his / her iPhone has a newer or old bootroom so that he /she gets to know whether their apple devices can be unlocked or not.\n","tags":["Apple","jailbreak","Tricks"],"title":"How To Know Whether Your iPhone Has New or Old Bootroom"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T13:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/buddy-media-helps-marketers-take-advantage-of-facebooks-new-likes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Buddy Media already helps big brands do more with their Facebook presence. Today the company is extending its service to include Facebook Open Graph integration.\nThis update is about connecting the dots between user activity on and off Facebook — think the “Like” button — so that platform users can manage and track their website’s Facebook performance in addition to Page performance and content. They’ve also added real-time analytics for all social activity and a new publish option so that clients can connect with customers who “liked” content on their sites.\n","tags":["Buddy Media","Facebook","MARKETING","Social Media"],"title":"Buddy Media Helps Marketers Take Advantage of Facebook’s New “Likes”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T13:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/gmail-gets-its-name-back-in-the-uk/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" In the UK, Google was forced to give its email service Gmail a different name, Googlemail, because of a trademark dispute. These disputes take a long time (Gmail was changed into Googlemail in October 19, 2005), so Google opted on using a different (yet recognizable) name until the dispute is resolved.\nFour and a half years later, UK users will finally get their @gmail.com addresses, as Googlemail is changing back into Gmail. Users will have the possibility of keeping their old @googlemail.com address or switching to a new one. From the announcement: “If you already have a Google email account in the UK, you’ll soon have the option to switch your existing @googlemail.com address to the matching @gmail.com one, but you’re also free to stick with @googlemail.com. And starting later this week, anybody who signs up for a new account in the UK will get an @gmail.com address.”\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","Email","News","UK"],"title":"Gmail Gets Its Name Back in the UK"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T12:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/ipad-gets-the-microwave-treatment/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Poor iPad. It’s only been on the market for a month, and it’s already been crashed to bits with a baseball bat, blended and generally abused in every possible way.\nIn hopefully the last act of agression against this beautiful piece of technology, the iPad has now also been microwaved. As always, it’s not hard to guess what the outcome is, but you just have to see the inevitable result.\n","tags":["Apple","Microwave","Video"],"title":"iPad Gets the Microwave Treatment"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T12:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/dropbox-updates-app-with-slick-ipad-support/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" If you’re a fan of cloud storage service Dropbox and own an iPad, it’s your lucky day. The iPhone version was already quite good, but Dropbox have now updated the app for better iPad support.\nThe new version of the app, available for free here [warning: iTunes link], makes great use of the extra screen real estate afforded by the iPad and takes advantage of both portrait and landscape modes. A few other visual niceties separate the iPad from the iPhone version, making an overall slicker appearance and implementation on the larger device.\n","tags":["Apple","Cloud","Dropbox","Facebook","Twitter","Updates"],"title":"Dropbox Updates App With Slick iPad Support"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T12:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/48-of-parents-friend-their-kids-on-facebook-stats/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" When consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo prepared for Mother’s Day by conducting a survey of parents’ social media practices, it found that nearly half (48%) of parents add their children as friends on Facebook.\nParents admitted that “it can be awkward at times” when they follow their kids’ Facebook updates, but think that it’s probably worth it to keep tabs on them. Of course, savvy teens could easily exclude their parents from seeing potentially incriminating updates using Facebook’s advanced privacy features.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Facebook","MySpace","report","Social Media","stats","Security"],"title":"48% of Parents Friend Their Kids on Facebook [STATS]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T12:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/google-tells-which-versions-of-android-are-most-common/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Android Team today published a snapshot of the platform which shows the versions of Android most commonly in use. Though the platform is frequently criticized for being highly fragmented, there are three versions used far more than the rest.\nOut of the six supported versions of Android, it is a close three-way split between 1.5 (37.2%), 1.6 (29.4%), and 2.1 (32.4%). Version 1.1, 2.0, and 2.0.1 combined only make up 1% of Android users.\n","tags":["Android","Google","report","stats"],"title":"Google tells which versions of Android are most common"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T11:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/paypal-phish/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"PayPal users are at risk of getting their credentials stolen if they follow instructions given in a scam email.\n“We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party…. PayPal will verify it with your bank records for your own protection. If you provide a wrong PIN your account will be suspended or limited for unauthorized account access.”\n” Please visit the Resolution Center and complete the steps to remove limitations.”\n","tags":["advice","alert","PayPal","Phishing","Security"],"title":"PayPal Phish"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T11:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/i-want-an-atm-card/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"When I was a child, I was fascinated by ATM machines. I had a savings account which my mother would deposit money regularly and I waited for the day that I could raid the account with the ATM card for frivolous spending on console games and fast food.\nNigerians have developed a cunning method to transfer millions of dollars to lucky winners worldwide. Yes, it is indeed the humble ATM card.\n","tags":["alert","report","spam","Security"],"title":"I Want an ATM Card"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T11:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/a-virus-is-coming-tell-all-your-friends/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Email hoaxes are nothing new, dating back at least as far as 1994 with what is widely believed to have been the first email hoax—referred to as the “Goodtimes virus” or the “Goodtimes virus hoax” after the subject of the email. The message in the early version was short and to the point, advising recipients not to open email messages with the subject “Good Times” because doing so would ruin their files. This, of course, was not true, but in cases where the recipient complied with the warning, it obviously had the effect of ruining their chances of actually reading any legitimate email messages with that very subject.\n","tags":["advice","hoax","report","spam","Security"],"title":"A Virus Is Coming! Tell All Your Friends!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T11:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/ie-losing-market-share-chrome-gaining/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"For the first time, Microsoft’s share of the browser marked has slipped below 60 percent, according to figures from Net Applications, a Aliso Viejo, Calif., web app and metrics firm .\nBrowser market share:\nMicrosoft — 59.95 percent Mozilla’s Firefox — 24.59 percent Google Chrome — 6.73 percent Apple’s Safari — 4.72 percent Opera — 2.30 percent. Story Here.\n","tags":["Apple","Browsers","Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Opera","report","review","Safari"],"title":"IE losing market share, Chrome gaining"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T00:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/today-show-launches-2-minute-daily-web-video/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Another mainstream media outlet is dipping their toes into online. “TODAY in 2 Minutes” is a new online-only feature of The Today Show.\nThe show will feature host Natalie Morales and will include two minutes of Today content, including weather, news headlines and other stories. Each segment will appear on TODAYshow.com and MSN.com at 6:30 a.m. ET every weekday. The spots will initially be sponsored by Buick.\n“In 2009, TODAYshow.com had more video streams than the combined total for all of ABC News and CBS News sites,” said Today Executive Producer Jim Bell in a statement released today. “TODAY in 2 Minutes is for people who can’t wait until 7 a.m. to quickly get the news of the day from a place they know and trust.”\n","tags":["Video","YouTube"],"title":"“Today Show” Launches 2-Minute Daily Web Video"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T00:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/men-in-blue-suits-raid-gizmodo/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Many bloggers and commentators are making much of the fact that San Mateo police served a search warrant on the home of Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen and confiscated computers, servers and other equipment, probably as a result of his postings about the capabilities of the lost prototype Apple 4G iPhone.\nGawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, made public the fact that it paid $5,000 for the prototype iPhone which was accidentally left in a bar by one of Apple’s software engineers last month.\n","tags":["Apple","News","report","review"],"title":"Men in blue suits raid Gizmodo"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-04T00:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/04/solving-captchas-as-cottage-industry/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Make big money! $.80 to $1.20 per 1,000\nPeople in China, Bangladesh and China are bidding on jobs solving CAPTCHAS so spammers can create new email accounts, but the work is a bit tedious, according to a story in the New York Times.\nMany brokers and middlemen who manage the service for spammers and do the hiring are finding it difficult to make a profit.\nCAPTCHAS is an acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” and are used by Web email providers to prevent spammers from using automated agents to create new email accounts to send spam.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Solving CAPTCHAS as cottage industry"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T23:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/why-doesnt-windows-include-native-pdf-reader-support/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Dear Microsoft,\nWe’d like you to consider developing a PDF reader for your Windows OS.\nSomething such as Apple’s Preview would be great:\n“To view a PDF file, just double-click it to open it in Preview.”\nMac doesn’t require a third-party application to view PDFs, so why does Windows?\nHeck, you don’t even need to build it into the OS. Just make it an optional download such as your Save As PDF add-in for Office.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Microsoft","PDF","Wishlist"],"title":"Why doesn't Windows include native PDF reader support?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T23:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/australias-web-censorship-effort-put-on-hold/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A spokesman for Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has said that legislation that would set up a $120 million Internet censorship system requiring ISPs to block pornography (and information about euthanasia) will not be introduced before Australia’s upcoming elections, possibly October.\nLabor party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stirred up massive controversy when he made an election promise to block “illegal content” on the Internet including pornography.\nCritics have said that the censorship wouldn’t be effective, would slow downloads and suppress the free flow of information.\n","tags":["News","Yahoo"],"title":"Australia’s web censorship effort put on hold"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T21:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/samsung-tries-organizing-the-worlds-biggest-dodgeball-game/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Ah, cellphones and dodgeball, they go together like… well… they don’t really go together at all, but that’s not stopping Samsung Mobile from organizing what will purportedly be the world’s largest dodgeball game on May 12.\nThe practice of launching a stunt to herald the advent of a new product is nothing new — remember when the Droid took over Times Square? And Samsung is no stranger to the record realm; it attempted to make the World Record for collecting the largest donation of mobile phones in one location in April at the Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, TX (the company failed). And managed to set the World Record for the fastest text message sent using Swype technology on the Samsung Omnia II.\n","tags":["Facebook","flickr","Hardware","Mobile 2.0","MySpace","Social Media","sports","Twitter","YouTube"],"title":"Samsung Tries Organizing the World’s Biggest Dodgeball Game"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T21:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/twitter-to-launch-embeddable-tweets/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A new blog post from the Twitter media team suggests that the company will launch an embeddable tweets feature sometime tomorrow.\nMost of the time, when a blog or website wants to add specific tweets to its blog posts, it has to either quote the text or screenshot the tweets and put them in the post. Suffice it to say, the former doesn’t have have the same impact as the latter, but the latter is a time-intensive affair.\n","tags":["Embedded Tweets","News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter to Launch Embeddable Tweets?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T20:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/whoops-treasury-still-hacked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I was wrong in my earlier assessment that the three treasury websites had been cleaned… the attack site was simply tracking ip addresses, and would not serve the iframe on subsequent visits.I really should have noticed that earlier, and have no excuse except that it was very early. And pre-caffeine.\nFolks should stay away from the sites mentioned until they’re cleaned.\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"Whoops – Treasury still hacked."},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T19:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/a-hijackthis-toolbar-from-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Spam emails such as the one below have been doing the rounds on the Internet hoping to lure recipients into downloading a Facebook toolbar.\nIf you download the file by clicking on “Download Here”, you’ll see a file with the icon shown below:\nIf you take a closer look at the icon, “darkSector” is shown inside of it. How strange. Is this actually a Facebook toolbar? Let’s take a look at the property of the file since the file looks a bit fishy. In the file properties, you’ll see the following in the Details tab.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Hijack","Malware","report","review","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"A HijackThis Toolbar from Facebook?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T19:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/youtube-to-let-users-charge-rental-fees-for-videos/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" YouTube’s movie rental service is still in its infancy, and it still only offers a small selection of films, but that could change quickly. YouTube exec Hunter Walk told MediaPost that the site will soon offer its users the ability to charge rental fees for their uploaded videos.\nFor the past couple of years YouTube has been focusing on ways for its users to monetize their videos should they become very popular. It launched the YouTube Partnership Program last year, which allows some folks with popular videos (YouTube staff decide which ones are eligible) to share advertising revenue with Google.\n","tags":["Google","News","rental","YouTube"],"title":"YouTube to Let Users Charge Rental Fees for Videos"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T19:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/second-life-users-file-class-action-lawsuit-over-virtual-land/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" A group of Second Life users is suing Second Life’s creator over a virtual land dispute. They say their contractual property ownership rights have been changed and that this alteration of the terms of service constitutes fraud and violates California consumer protection laws.\nBefore you scoff too much at this seemingly ludicrous lawsuit, remember that virtual worlds aren’t just “funny money” and avatars. They’re serious business, both for the owners and investors who profit from them and for the users who pump hundreds and even thousands of dollars each into creating characters and interacting online.\n","tags":["Gaming","report","SecondLife","Social Media"],"title":"Second Life Users File Class Action Lawsuit Over Virtual Land"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T19:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/report-doj-ftc-scuffle-over-scrutinizing-apple-on-antitrust/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"On a day when investors began celebrating Apple’s report of having already sold its one millionth iPad, news from this morning’s New York Post — which was the first with the story of the Sirius + XM merger — has thrown a cold towel on investors’ sentiments. The Post cites a single anonymous source as saying that essentially the only thing stopping a government inquiry into whether Section 3.3.1 of Apple’s Developers’ Agreement violates antitrust law, is a dispute over which government department gets first crack: the Federal Trade Commission, or the Dept. of Justice Antitrust Division.\n","tags":["AMD","Android","Apple","Mobile","report"],"title":"Report: DOJ, FTC scuffle over scrutinizing Apple on antitrust"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T19:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/facebook-users-like-sex-stats/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Self-proclaimed social media scientist Dan Zarrella has already applied linguistic methodologies to psychologically profile Twitter users. Now he’s using the same technology and approach to break down Facebook sharing behaviors.\nZarrella uses the Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) methods to arrive at the conclusion that, “Articles … that include sexual references in their titles are shared on Facebook far more than the average story.”\n","tags":["Facebook","report","Sex","Social Media","stats"],"title":"Facebook Users Like Sex [STATS]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T19:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/another-call-to-avoid-admin-privileges/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"For the second time recently, a security researcher has pointed out that running machines without administrative privileges could significantly improve security.\nMikko Hypponen, the head of research at Finnish AV company F-Secure in an interview with The Inquirer, said a great way to stop a lot of malware would be to take administrative rights away from online users.\n“Most wouldn’t notice (although those who did would be incandescent with annoyance) and most malware would be stopped from functioning. It should have been done already,” he said.\n","tags":["advice","report","Security"],"title":"Another call to avoid “admin” privileges"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T17:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/dont-play-with-natural-disasters/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"We want to warn you of an email message in Spanish we’ve received with the subject ( Urgente ) Posible Terremoto y Tsunami con un 89 % de efectividad and that is of course false.\nThe message consists of different images and informs users about an alert of earthquake and tsunami in Chile.\nBesides, it passes itself off as a warning of National Geographic, in order to make it more credible.\n","tags":["Malware","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Don’t play with Natural Disasters!!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T17:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/download-microsoft-visio-2010-viewer/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft Visio 2010 Viewer allows anyone to view Visio drawings and diagrams (created with Visio 5.0 through Visio 2010) inside Internet Explorer (versions 5 through Web browser. ****The Visio 2010 Viewer has all the functionality of the previous viewers, and includes all the security fixes.\nVisio Viewer enables users to discover the advantages of using Visio drawings, charts, and illustrations in a Web-based environment. You can view Visio drawings files with a .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, or .vtx extension) in Windows Explorer. Internet Explorer will open, and Visio Viewer will render the drawing in the browser window.\n","tags":["Download","Microsoft","Microsoft Office","Offer"],"title":"Download Microsoft Visio 2010 Viewer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-05-03T14:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/05/03/treasury-website-hacked/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"For a short while today a couple of treas.gov websites were hacked, and were reaching out to an attack site in Ukraine.\nThe websites involved were bep.gov (Bureau of Engraving and Printing), bep.treas.gov and moneyfactory.gov. They had been script injected with the line of code circled in red…\nBtw, you should _not_ mess with the attack site (grepad) … it was dead earlier today, but could easily come back to life.\n","tags":["hack","report","review","Security"],"title":"Treasury website hacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-24T20:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/24/hey-i-will-be-back-soon/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Hi dear visitors,\nI’m sorry I’ve not been here for a while, there are some personal problems here in my life and I could not keep up updating my blog 🙁 , I guess it would take up to one more week, so I hope I can back here updating my blog from next week 🙂\nThe best way you can help me is donate via the link in right column of the my blog.\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"Hey! I will be back soon!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T22:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/microsoft-asked-to-make-a-federal-budget-video-game/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Obama administration’s Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission has been working with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer to make a computer game about managing the United States federal budget and deficit, USA Today reports.\nPresident Obama appointed Erskine Bowles and Alan K. Simpson to lead an 18-person, bi-partisan commission to generate ideas for dealing with the nation’s rising deficit and other fiscal challenges. The game is just a footnote amid the commission’s broader objectives, of course, but it’s actually not a bad idea.\n","tags":["Gaming","Government","Microsoft","Politics"],"title":"Microsoft Asked to Make a Federal Budget Video Game"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T22:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/gmail-adds-drag-and-drop-to-file-attachments/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Gmail has a new feature for Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome users: drag-and-drop file attachments. The feature is very straightforward — just drag files from your desktop onto your e-mail, and a green box will appear where you can drop your files.\nGoogle promises it will “enable this for other browsers as soon as they support this feature.” Why the wait? Drag-and-drop functionality is an HTML5 feature. Currently only the Gecko layout engine — the engine that powers Firefox — fully supports HTML5 drag-and-drop. WebKit, which powers both Safari and Chrome, has only partial support for drag-and-drop.\n","tags":["Gmail","Google","News"],"title":"Gmail Adds Drag-and-Drop to File Attachments"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T22:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/how-much-do-musicians-make-from-online-music-sales/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Short answer: an infinitesimally small amount.\nIf you have any sympathy for musicians you’ll buy their CDs from their web sites or at their performances. That’s pretty much the conclusion you’ll draw from a great attempt at quantifying musicians’ pay rates in the online music business(es) by David McCandless of InformationIsBeautiful.net.\nMcCandless tried to determine how many songs or CDs a musician would need to sell in various ways to make the U.S. minimum wage ($1,600 per month). It was a tough project. He wrote: “As ever, this was incredibly difficult to research. Industry figures are hard to get hold of.”\n","tags":["Music","report"],"title":"How much do musicians make from online music sales?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/alyssa-milano-teaches-jimmy-kimmel-how-to-use-twitter/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"On Jimmy Kimmel Live 2 nights ago, Jimmy asked guest Alyssa Milano to explain Twitter and hashtags to him. In the video below, Alyssa explains that she tweets 12 to 22 times per day, that she likes to imagine Jimmy Kimmel naked when she’s nervous and that she uses a lot of hashtags — a big plus in my book.\nA closer look at the actress’s Twitter stream reveals that she uses TweetDeck, an app she likes so much that she asks Twitter “not to kill TweetDeck.” The acquisition of Tweetie has made the future of other third party Twitter clients a little uncertain, but with support like this, the folks at TweetDeck have nothing to worry about.\n","tags":["Interesting","Twitter","Video"],"title":"Alyssa Milano Teaches Jimmy Kimmel How to Use Twitter"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/a-trojan-adding-malicious-routing-entries/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Backdoor.Rohimafo is a Trojan that has several back door functions. It not only opens a back door and performs the usual functions but it also can perform some decidedly unusual functions.\nIt attempts to block users from connecting to remote servers; not only specific servers but also specific network segments by using PersistentRoutes in Windows. PersistentRoutes can be used to add a routing entry to a routing table persistently. The route.exe command can be used to add an entry like the following:\n","tags":["Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"A Trojan Adding Malicious Routing Entries"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/myspace-upgrades-your-social-calendar/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" If you’re one of those people who scribbles your plans for a given week on the back of the junk mail in your purse (totally not me…), then you could probably benefit from MySpace’s new platform.\nToday, MySpace continues on its quest to distinguish itself as a place for entertainment and socializing with the addition of what is essentially a calendar that combines your events, your friends’ events, concerts and shindigs put on by your favorite artists and even events from your Facebook account. You can also buy concert tix from band pages and pages of other entertainers.\n","tags":["Film","Music","MySpace","Social Media"],"title":"MySpace Upgrades Your Social Calendar"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/google-11000-domains-carrying-rogue-security-products/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Niels Provos of the Google Security Team has blogged about the rise of malicious web sites carrying rogue security products, which the Google team calls “Fake AV.” Google has been engaged in a constant battle against the sites because the operators who peddle them have been refining their techniques for poisoning Google search engine results in order to victimize Google users by drawing them to malicious download sites.\nHe wrote: “we conducted an in-depth analysis of the prevalence of Fake AV over the course of the last 13 months, and the research paper containing our findings, ‘The Nocebo Effect on the Web: An Analysis of Fake AV distribution’ is going to be presented at the Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET) in San Jose, CA on April 27th.”\n","tags":["Google","News","report","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Google: 11,000 domains carrying rogue security products"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/uk-firm-offers-clickjacking-visualization-tool/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"UK security firm Context Information Security Ltd., is making available a browser-based tool that will demonstrate clickjacking techniques that were discussed at a Blackhat Europe 2010 presentation.\nOn the Context site, they said “Clickjacking is a term first introduced by Jeremiah Grossman and Robert Hansen in 2008 to describe a technique whereby an attacker tricks a user into performing certain actions on a website by hiding clickable elements inside an invisible iframe.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"UK firm offers clickjacking visualization tool"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/that-didnt-take-long-iphone-4-0-beta-jailbreak-tool-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" We suspected that the iPhone 4.0 would be nothing special compared to previous versions, at least when it comes to jailbreaking the operating system. Now, a jailbreak tool has been released for iPhone 4.0 Beta, and the eternal game of cat and mouse between Apple and the hacking community continues.\nEven if you’ve managed to install the iPhone 4.0 beta software on your iPhone, this jailbreak is not an easy one — just take a look at all of the warnings. In short, this jailbreak is aimed at app developers, not the general public. Nevertheless it’s here, meaning that a jailbreak for consumers will probably be ready and waiting when the 4.0 OS comes out of beta.\n","tags":["Apple","jailbreak"],"title":"That Didn’t Take Long: iPhone 4.0 Beta Jailbreak Tool Released"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/norway-uses-ipad-to-run-the-government-during-icelandic-volcano/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Thousands of travelers are stranded throughout Europe as ash continues to rain down from an erupting volcano in Iceland this week. Among them is Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who, according to his press secretary, is “running the Norwegian government from the United States via his new iPad.”\nCNN reports that the Norwegian prime minister was in New York this week for President Obama’s nuclear summit and has been left stranded on American soil thanks to the widespread closure of most of European airspace. The volcanic eruption sent a cloud of ash toward mainland Europe that could take up to 48 hours to dissipate, resulting in over 6,000 canceled flights across the E.U.\n","tags":["Apple","Government","Politics"],"title":"Norway Uses iPad to Run the Government During Icelandic Volcano"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T21:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/evians-viral-roller-babies-jump-from-youtube-to-tv/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The lovable Evian Roller Babies, which broke the world record for the most viewed online advertisement in history last year, have made the leap from YouTube to your television.\nEvian’s wildly successful viral campaign has surpassed 100 million total views. It was one of the first YouTube-exclusive campaigns by a major brand.\nNow according to Social Times, the campaign has debuted on Los Angeles TV stations and will run in New York sometime this summer. The company will also air the commercials in other countries, including France and the UK.\n","tags":["commercials","Evian","Evian Babies","TV","Video","viral video","YouTube"],"title":"Evian’s Viral Roller Babies Jump from YouTube to TV"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T20:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/ap-stylebook-finally-changes-web-site-to-website/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" This might not mean much if you’re not writing or editing a tech blog, but news that the AP – whose stylebook is still the standard for all things grammar and punctuation in the news world — is officially changing “Web site” to “website” was met with a warm reception in our newsroom (and likely quite a few others) this afternoon.\nWe’d actually gone rogue on the issue ourselves several months ago, thinking that “Web site” was a rather antiquated way for describing “a computer connected to the internet that maintains a series of web pages on the World Wide Web.”\n","tags":["News","report","trending"],"title":"AP Stylebook Finally Changes “Web site” to “website”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T20:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/new-iphone-to-arrive-in-june-rumor/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" There has been widespread speculation about the release date of Apple’s next generation iPhone, including (yet another) report that the Verizon iPhone is finally coming this year. Now we have perhaps the most substantial evidence yet that a new version of the Apple smartphone is coming to AT\u0026T in June.\nBoy Genius Report confirms from multiple sources that AT\u0026T has blocked its employees from taking vacations during the month of June. The only time the carrier has done this previously was for earlier iPhone launches. We know that the iPhone is due for a refresh and that it usually happens during the summer, but this is the strongest evidence to date that the new iPhone will arrive in consumers’ hands this June.\n","tags":["Apple","Mobile 2.0","rumor"],"title":"New iPhone to Arrive in June [RUMOR]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/facebook-twice-as-popular-as-google-in-the-workplace/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Business employees are visiting Facebook from the workplace more than any other internet site, including Google, Managed Security Services company Network Box discovered in a recent study.\nThe company looked at 13 billion URLs used by businesses in the first quarter of 2010 and found that 6.8% of all business Internet traffic goes to Facebook, which is double the amount of business traffic that goes to Google and nearly triple the amount that Yahoo gets.\n","tags":["Facebook","Google","report","stats","Yahoo","YouTube"],"title":"Facebook Twice as Popular as Google in the Workplace"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T20:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/iceland-volcano-satellite-image-shows-massive-ash-cloud/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A volcano in Iceland with probably the coolest and most formidable name ever, Eyjafjallajokull, erupted this Wednesday, April 14. As we wrote earlier, European travelers have since been stranded around the world — including the Norwegian prime minister, whose trusty iPad is thankfully keeping his country’s government afloat.\nNASA’s Terra satellite captured the above image depicting the enormous ash cloud migrating from the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano into Northern Europe yesterday. It’s unknown how long it will take the hazardous cloud to disperse, but estimates start at 48 hours — leaving much of Europe grounded in the volcano’s wake.\n","tags":["Eyjafjallajokull","Iceland","imagery","NASA","News","satellite","volcano","worlds news"],"title":"Iceland Volcano Satellite Image Shows Massive Ash Cloud"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T20:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/apple-remains-americas-most-innovative-company/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" BusinessWeek and Fortune have both released their annual rankings — the 50 Most Innovative Companies and the Fortune 500, respectively — and Apple has strong showings in both publications.\nFor the sixth consecutive year, Apple ranked number one in BusinessWeek’s 50 Most Innovative Companies report. When you consider that BusinessWeek only started this ranking system in 2005, that statistic becomes even more impressive. James Andrew, senior partner and head of global innovation at Boston Consulting Group (the company that provides the data to BusinessWeek) claims that every year Apple is the “hands down winner,” although Google remains a strong second. Furthermore, when those surveyed were asked what company would replace Apple as the most innovative over the next five years, the most common response was “no one.”\n","tags":["Apple","Business","Report"],"title":"Apple Remains America’s Most Innovative Company"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/seesmic-founder-to-twitter-naysayers-f-you-video/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Loic Le Meur, Seesmic founder and tech scene leader, was clearly bullish on the Twitter platform in this interview conducted yesterday at Chirp, the Twitter developer conference.\nLe Meur, whose company is launching its own platform, is a big believer in the opportunities for those who develop Twitter apps. Innovative apps that add value and diversity will always find a place in the market, and Le Meur is confident about Seesmic’s current position.\n","tags":["Chirp","developers","seesmic","Twitter","Video"],"title":"Seesmic Founder to Twitter Naysayers: “F— You” [VIDEO]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T19:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/volcanoes-and-disaster-recovery/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Dr. Johannes Ullrich at SANS brought up a good point in his morning podcast (Stormcast 296 ) about widespread transportation shutdowns and disaster recovery planning.\nThe Eyjafjallajokull glacier volcano in Iceland, which has stopped all air travel in the UK, Western Europe and Scandinavia, of course is the case in point.\nThose writing and updating disaster recovery plans should keep in mind the possibilities of just such widespread transportation shutdowns when they plan for personnel to operate remote (backup) network operations centers. If an enterprise’s plan calls for an IT crew to fly to a backup NOC and they can’t get there, what then?\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Volcanoes and disaster recovery"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T19:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/will-foursquare-hit-one-million-members-on-foursquare-day/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" It’s 4/16 and for fans of the social network application Foursquare, it’s cause for celebration. All across the world, Foursquare users are celebrating Foursquare Day by gathering in swarms and taking advantage of Foursquare deals offered by bars, restaurants and other venues. The big day could also potentially be the day Foursquare reaches one million members.\nAccording to Co-Founder Dennis Crowley, who joined me on NBC San Diego earlier this morning (see video below), the company had nothing to do with the day except the creation of a special badge — it was devised 100% by fans of the service.\n","tags":["foursquare"],"title":"Will Foursquare Hit One Million Members on Foursquare Day?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T19:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/sony-ericsson-returns-to-profitability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" It’s no secret that Sony Ericsson has been struggling for the last couple of years. It hasn’t reported a profitable quarter since 2008 and 2009 has been especially tough for the company, which ended Q1 with a 293 million euro ($397 million) net income loss.\nThis morning, however, Sony Ericsson posted a 21 million euro ($28 million) profit for Q1 2010. On the downside, it also shipped 10.5 million handsets — 4 million fewer than the number shipped in Q1 2009 and 4.1 million fewer than the number shipped in Q4 2009.\n","tags":["Financial results","Mobile","profits","Sony Ericsson"],"title":"Sony Ericsson Returns to Profitability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T17:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/celebrate-earth-day-dr-seuss-style/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Just in time for Earth Day, Oceanhouse Media has released two special iPhone and iPad apps based around Dr. Seuss’s classic book, The Lorax. First published in 1971, The Lorax was written by Dr. Seuss to teach children about the value of caring about the environment.\nLike the other Dr. Seuss apps for the iPhone and iPad, the spirit of the characters and story are recreated for touch devices. And just like the other Dr. Seuss eBooks, the book can either be read aloud at a set pace, put in auto-play or readers can read and interact with the book on their own. The eBook costs $3.99.\n","tags":["Apple","Events"],"title":"Celebrate Earth Day, Dr. Seuss Style"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T17:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/office-2010-releases-to-manufacturing-availability-as-soon-as-may-1/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The first volume licensing arrangements for Microsoft Office 2010 will be made through company partners on May 1, almost two weeks earlier than expected. This news today from the company’s Office Engineering team, which released the final build of all versions of the company’s principal applications suite today.\n“Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we’ve had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version — that’s more than 3 times the number of 2007 beta downloads!” reads this afternoon’s post by the Engineering team. “The feedback that we’ve received from all these programs has shaped the set of products we’re excited about, and that I’m sure will delight our customers.”\n","tags":["Announcement","Microsoft","Microsoft Office","News"],"title":"Office 2010 releases to manufacturing, availability as soon as May 1"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-17T17:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/17/facebook-youtube-are-sucking-enterprise-bandwidth/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A study of web traffic from enterprises in the first quarter of this year has shown that YouTube videos used 10 percent of bandwidth – more than any other site. Facebook traffic used 4.5 percent, Windows update 3.3, Yahoo!’s image server Yimg 2.7 and Google searches 2.5 percent.\nThe study, by the Hong Kong-based security firm Network Box, analyzed traffic to and from 13 billion URLs.\nThe study also analyzed the number of hits:\n","tags":["Facebook","report","Yahoo","YouTube"],"title":"Facebook, YouTube are sucking enterprise bandwidth"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-16T14:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/16/steve-jobs-show-premieres-off-broadway-next-week/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The CEO of Apple is certainly no stranger to the stage, being known for giving keynotes that typically have the effect of rendering tech geeks into little piles of goo after the announcement of a new product. But now Mr. Jobs — or at least, the story of his career — will be gracing a new stage: an Off Broadway theatre.\nPlaywright Mike Daisey wasn’t scheduled to perform his new monologue about the Apple head honcho until next year, but popular demand from New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre has pushed up the premiere of Notes Toward the Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs to a one-night-only run on April 22. The venue’s artistic director was reportedly so excited about the work that he commissioned a one evening run even though the play is officially a “work in progress and not ready for review.”\n","tags":["Apple","Threater"],"title":"Steve Jobs Show Premieres Off Broadway Next Week"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-16T14:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/16/explore-space-with-buzz-aldrin-on-your-iphone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Astronaut Buzz Aldrin [iTunes link] has his own iPhone app, and it’s packed full of information, news, images and videos related to space exploration. It’s currently the one of the most popular apps in the Apple App Store’s Education category.\n“Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science and Space Exploration” is divided into five sections: Space Buzz, News, Interactive, Buzz Life, and More. We’ve pictured most of them below.\nThe Space Buzz section serves up a variety of content (mission data, videos, photos, “buzz’s takes” and more) on nine subjects in space exploration, including Deep Space Exploration, Mysteries \u0026 Myths, Mars Exploration, Space Tourism \u0026 Private Ventures, Hubble \u0026 Other Telescopes, Moon Exploration, International Space Station and International Space Race.\n","tags":["Apple","buzz aldrin","Space","YouTube"],"title":"Explore Space with Buzz Aldrin on Your iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-16T13:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/16/the-goats-are-baaaahk/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Taken from Google Official Blog:\nLast year, in our quest to minimize our carbon footprint (and keep people on their toes), we turned to an unlikely solution for mowing an overgrown field: goats. More than 200 goats from California Grazing have once again arrived at our Mountain View headquarters where they’ll stay for over a week chomping away on grassy goodness. The cost of bringing in the goats is comparable to hiring lawn mowers for the same job and the green benefits are clear: the goats eliminate mower emissions, reduce noise pollution, restore plant species and fertilize while grazing.\n","tags":["Google","Interesting","News"],"title":"The goats are baaaahk!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-16T13:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/16/google-reveals-the-future-of-printing-with-google-cloud-print/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Whenever you want to print out a document, you rely on your local operating system, which must have drivers installed for each printer you intend to use. Most of the time, it’s not an issue: at home, you probably have one printer, and all your PCs have the required drivers.\nThings get a bit more complicated when you want to print something from a mobile device, like an iPad. Or a laptop based on Google’s Chrome OS, which relies entirely on web apps and services. This is why Google is working on Google Cloud Print, a service that enables “any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer.”\n","tags":["Cloud","Google","Apple","printing"],"title":"Google Reveals the Future of Printing With Google Cloud Print"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-15T12:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/15/droid-incredible-hits-verizon-on-april-29/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Earlier today, a staging site for the HTC Incredible was found on Verizon’s servers with information about its release date and new name. According to the site — which is now password-protected — the Droid Incredible by HTC will launch on April 29.\nAs we mentioned yesterday, the specs behind HTC’s latest device are pretty drool-worthy: a Snapdragon CPU, an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and video, a 480×800 OLED screen — it pretty much looks like the next great Android device.\n","tags":["Android","droid","droid incredible","HTC Incredible","nexus one","verizon"],"title":"Droid Incredible Hits Verizon on April 29"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-15T11:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/15/subdomains-defaced-on-the-telegraph-website/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Telegraph, one of the biggest newspapers in the UK, hasn’t had a good time of it lately where their website is concerned. There were vulnerabilities found in relation to the site back in March involving database access, and it seems a hacking group has gone in and defaced two subdomains.\nThese are the two subdomains in question:\nshortbreaks(dot)telegraph.co.uk\nwine-and-dine(dot)telegraph.co.uk/site/index.php\nThey appear to have been compromised by “R.N.S. – Romanian National Security”. Here’s a screenshot, both defacements are identical:\n","tags":["alert","hack","report","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Subdomains defaced on The Telegraph website"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-15T11:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/15/opera-mini-rules-apples-app-store/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The fact that Opera Mini was admitted to the App Store was a huge surprise, but judging from the popularity of the app, it was the right move, at least from the users’ point of view.\nAt one point, Opera Mini was the most popular free app in all regional App Stores, as you can see in the screenshot below. Right now, the situation has changed slightly, but Opera Mini is still on top everywhere except in Australia, where it holds the second place.\n","tags":["App Store","Apple","Mobile 2.0","Mobile Applications","Opera"],"title":"Opera Mini Rules Apple’s App Store"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T23:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/t-mobile-after-kin-sidekick-lives-on-life-support/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft’s debut of the KIN yesterday has tech pundits talking about Microsoft’s mobile strategy, about the future of Windows Phone, and about the state of the “dumbphone” in general. It’s a compelling product. And because KIN comes from Sharp and Danger’s parent company Microsoft, the KIN drew a lot of comparisons to the Sidekick straight away. Yesterday, I called KIN the “Sidekick of the 2010s,” Ars Technica called it “Sidekick’s next of KIN,” and Wired said Microsoft wants to “update the Sidekick’s M.O. for a new decade.”\n","tags":["Microsoft","T-Mobile"],"title":"T-Mobile: After KIN, Sidekick lives on life support"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T23:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/google-upgrades-its-twitter-search-features/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google’s adding an intriguing new feature to its Twitter search options –- the ability to “replay” a moment in time to see what people were tweeting about a given topic at any point between the present and the advent of the microblogging tool.\nIn a blog post, Google explains that this could be used to “explore any topic that people have discussed on Twitter. Want to know how the news broke about health care legislation in Congress, what people were saying about Justice Paul Stevens’ retirement or what people were tweeting during your own marathon run?”\n","tags":["Google","News","Real-Time Search","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Google Upgrades Its Twitter Search Features"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T23:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/rip-windows-vista-rtm/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Avid readers of the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Blog (and really, how can you not be?) know that yesterday, April 13th, marked the end of support for Windows Vista RTM, also known as Windows Vista SP0.\nWe’d like to say that we’ll miss Vista RTM. We’d like to say that… but, well…\nCtrl+Alt+Del\nOn a related note, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) will reach its end of support this summer on July 13th. There are more positive memories of XP SP2, largely because of its emphasis on security.\n","tags":["Fun","Interesting","Microsoft","Windows"],"title":"RIP Windows Vista RTM"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T23:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/650000-tv-episodes-viewed-on-abcs-ipad-app/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Disney’s ABC television network was the first in the industry to market on the iPad with their impressive app. Downloaders can stream TV episodes free of charge and early data is showing that they’re doing so in droves.\nAccording to data shared with the Wall Street Journal, the ABC iPad app has been downloaded 205,000 times and users have already streamed 650,000 television episodes. Those streams have translated into several million ad impressions for the network’s iPad advertisers, including AT\u0026T, Sears and Target.\n","tags":["Apple","Disney","MARKETING","TV"],"title":"650,000 TV Episodes Viewed on ABC’s iPad App"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T23:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/from-xss-to-root-lessons-learned-from-a-security-breach/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In an excellent blog, the people from Apache did a very good job analyzing and documenting how a security breach happened–going through all the stages of the attack and drawing conclusions. Should you ever become the unfortunate victim of an attack, this blog offers an example of how to document it!\nI quote:”If you are a user of the Apache-hosted JIRA, Bugzilla, or Confluence, a hashed copy of your password has been compromised.” So if you are a user, please act accordingly after reading this blog 😉\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"From XSS to root: Lessons Learned From a Security Breach"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T23:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/library-of-congress-to-preserve-tweets-for-eternity/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Today the Library of Congress is announcing that it’s doing its part to digitally preserve each and every public tweet since the beginning of time … err Twitter. It fittingly broke the news on Twitter earlier today.\nAs a federal cultural institution, the Library of Congress exists for research purposes, preserving every form of written word imaginable — and now that includes our tweets.\nThe institution deems tweets important and hopes to use the archives “to learn about ourselves and the world around us.”\n","tags":["Library of Congress","News","Twitter"],"title":"Library of Congress to Preserve Tweets for Eternity"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T22:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/twitter-to-developers-attach-any-data-you-want-to-tweets/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Metadata has long been part of Twitter applications. Viewing conversation threads or learning about a user’s location has changed how users interact with content and have provided third party app developers with great opportunities to innovate on Twitter’s platform.\nRyan Sarver, Twitter’s director of platform, announced today at Chirp, the Twitter developer conference, that annotations can now be added to tweets. In other words, any kind of metadata can be added to any tweet; it’s up to developers to decide what kinds of apps they build to showcase what kinds of metadata.\n","tags":["Development","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter to Developers: Attach Any Data You Want to Tweets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T22:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/twitter-announces-user-streams-to-make-apps-real-time/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Twitter has just announced a new feature and API for desktop applications: users streams. The revelation was made by Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver at the Chirp conference.\nThe new API is focused around pushing out data to desktop applications in real time. There will no longer be rate-limits for data on desktops — tweets, retweets and all other updates will be streamed directly to the desktop.\n","tags":["News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter Announces User Streams to Make Apps Real-Time"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T22:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/twitter-launching-points-of-interest-to-tie-tweets-to-places/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Earlier this year we predicted that Twitter would use geotagging to identify physical places via Twitter, and today Evan Williams announced at the Chirp conference that the company is doing just that with its new Points of Interest feature.\nThe feature doesn’t appear to be live yet, but soon users will have the ability to click on a place name — included in geotagged tweets — to view the particular place on a map. Next to the map, Twitter users will see a stream of nearby tweets, giving them a real-time view of what’s happening in a particular place at a particular time.\n","tags":["locations","News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter Launching “Points of Interest” to Tie Tweets to Places"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T22:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/faceparty-password-sites-really-want-you-to-click-on-things/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"“Faceparty is a UK based social networking site allowing users to create online profiles and interact with each other using forums and messaging facilities similar to email” – Wikipedia\nFaceparty does things a little differently to other social networking sites, however. Unlike most places where you register a username and password then start telling people how your farm is doing, to join Faceparty you need to send a text message to the tune of £25 / $38(!) and then enter your one time use password onto this page (warning: quite a few swearwords, because the site is indeed down with the kids).\n","tags":["Phishing","report","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Faceparty password sites really want you to click on things"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T18:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/twitter-has-105-million-registered-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" In kicking off Twitter’s Chirp developer conference, the company finally revealed its long mysterious registered user number, and it’s surprisingly large (based on some prior outside estimates): 105 million, or to be exact, 105,779,710, according to a slide showing behind Co-founder Biz Stone during his opening remarks.\nThe growth’s not over either — Twitter says its still adding 300,000 users per day. Moreover, as many have speculated, most of Twitter’s traffic — 75% of it in fact — comes from third-party clients and applications.\n","tags":["News","report","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter Has 105 Million Registered Users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T18:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/heads-up-0day-itw-rihanna-is-a-lure/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"On April 9th, Tavis Ormandy published a proof of concept about how to use the latest version of Java to compromise a pc. You can read about it here. He notified Sun, but they weren’t concerned enough to break their patch cycle, so he published the code. The problem is that when Sun released Java 6, update 10 in April 2008, they introduced a new feature (it’s not a bug, it’s a feature folks) called Java Web Start. In order to make it easier for developers to install software, they created a method to execute a program from a website. ","tags":["0-Day","advice","alert","Malware","scam","Security"],"title":"Heads up – 0day ITW – Rihanna is a lure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T17:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/german-spammers-broaden-their-repertoire/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Last week we received a mass mailing that at first glance appeared no different from the usual mailbox clutter. The messages were in German and advertised an online casino. Nothing out of the ordinary there – after all, gambling-themed spam is one of the most popular in the German-speaking realms of cyberspace.\nBut after a closer inspection, these messages turned out to be of much more interest – all the links in the messages led to pages created on legitimate sites that had been compromised. The links looked like this: **\\*.com/news_.php or *****.com/1500.php.\n","tags":["alert","review","spam","Security"],"title":"German spammers broaden their repertoire"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T14:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/download-nasa-hidden-universe-theme-for-windows-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A universe filled with kaleidoscopic colors blazes across your desktop in this theme for Windows 7, revealed by the infrared imaging of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Discover more about Spitzer’s unique view of stars, nebulae, and galaxies on the Spitzer Space Telescope website.\nDownload:\nNASA Hidden Universe Theme Download\n","tags":["Microsoft","Offer","Theme","Updates","Windows 7"],"title":"Download NASA Hidden Universe Theme for Windows 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T14:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/please-give-me-your-username-and-password/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Yesterday evening our spamtraps started receiving the email below in a mass mailing action. The email was immediately flagged as spam even before reaching our spamtraps. No wonder since it has no To:-field, it has a different Reply-to:- than the From:-field and it comes from a DSL line IP address.\nIf the user replies to the email, the return address is set to helpdesk_teams@live.com.\nNice try, but the email is just to generic to be actually taken seriously by anyone. I expect to see targeted emails in the next days (as we’ve already seen last year).\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Please give me your username and password"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T14:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/zipping-images-and-documents-did-that-really-help/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Does anyone really care about opening a zip file to examine an RTF or JPEG file? This task—combined with a dull, unexciting, unstimulating subject line—competes with the content of the email to win a race of worthlessness. Spammers have traditionally used zip files to carry executables, but in most cases the subject line or the content of the message made an effort to encourage users to open the attachment.\nThere are cases of spamming attacks in which HTML attachments opened up a fully functional Web page, capable of carrying sensitive user information back to the fraudsters. However, with this latest spam attack using zipped files, not only have the spammers made an attempt to escape anti-spam filters, they’re missing out on reaching any users as well. The scope of returns for these messages looks to be much less rewarding than other comparable attacks.\n","tags":["Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"Zipping Images and Documents – Did That Really Help?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-14T14:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/14/apple-delays-international-ipad-launch/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" If, like me, you live outside of the U.S. and you’re waiting for your chance to purchase the iPad, you’re out of luck. Apple has delayed the international launch of the device until the end of May because it has sold more iPads (over half a million) than it anticipated.\nHere’s the official announcement:\n“Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"Apple Delays International iPad Launch"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T20:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/barcelona-vs-real-madrid-black-hat-seo-attack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Of course I’m talking about football. When I say football I mean the game that is played with one ball thas is kicked with the foot, not the other game that is known as football in the US even though it’s played using the hands.\nAnyway I don’t like football at all, it’s too boring fo me. But, at least in Europe, everyone loves football. And one of the best national championships is the Spanish one, with the 2 biggest teams being Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona. Every time they play against each other, millions of people watch that game, and news about it are going around all the time. Last Saturday they played in Madrid, and being this such a popular match, cybercriminals couldn’t miss this opportunity.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Phishing","scam","Search","SEO","warning","Security"],"title":"Barcelona vs. Real Madrid Black Hat SEO attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T20:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/adobe-creative-suite-5-now-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Although there’s a heated Adobe vs. Apple discussion going on, creative professionals are probably much more excited about the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite, which is now officially available.\nBesides the new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro and Dreamweaver, Adobe Creative Suite 5 also brings Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR® 2, which are “optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer, more immersive user experience.”\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Creative Suite","Dreamweaver","Illustrator","InDesign","News","Photoshop","Premiere","Updates"],"title":"Adobe Creative Suite 5 Now Available"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T20:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/malware-humor/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Every once in a while, you find some odd piece of text in a piece of malware.\nDebugging the TDL 3 rootkit yields some interesting results. Here are messages that dump in the debug window at various times:\nFri Apr 9 09:02:37.495 2010 (GMT-4): You people voted for Hubert Humphrey, and you killed Jesus\nFri Apr 9 09:03:01.900 2010 (GMT-4): Ah Lou, come on man, we really like this place\nFri Apr 9 11:53:08.715 2010 (GMT-4): Dude, meet me in Montana XX00, Jesus (H. Christ)\nFri Apr 9 12:18:27.522 2010 (GMT-4): I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every panda that wouldn’t screw to save it’s species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all those french beaches I’d never see. I wanted to breathe smoke\n","tags":["Fun","Interesting","Malware","Security"],"title":"Malware humor"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T18:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/plenty-of-updates-on-patch-tuesday/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Many patches are announced for tomorrow: The Redmond company expects to release 11 security bulletins. Of those 5 are rated critical, 5 important and 1 moderate. The patches belonging to the bulletins will close 25 security vulnerabilities in Windows, Exchange and in Office.\nAdobe plans to deliver security updates for critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat for all supported platforms tomorrow. Additionally, the automatic updater will be activated with the patches so in future updates get installed silent.\n","tags":["Adobe","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Plenty of Updates on Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T18:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/palm-is-for-sale/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Palm, the smartphone pioneer, is on the block. The company, which in recent years has been eclipsed by the iPhone (and to some extent by Google’s Android OS), failed to make much of a comeback with its most recent Pre and Pixi phones.\nNow Bloomberg reports the inevitable: Goldman Sachs and Qatalyst Partners have been tasked with finding a buyer for the ailing company, and bids may be sought as early as this week.\n","tags":["business","HTC","Mobile 2.0","News","palm","Palm Pixi","Palm Pre","Palm webOS","trending"],"title":"Palm Is for Sale"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T17:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/wordpress-blog-pages-redirected-to-rogue-site/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Brian Krebs, in his “Krebs on Security” blog is reporting that a large number of WordPress blog pages have been hacked to redirected visitors to networkads.net that downloads rogue security applications onto their machines. Also, the owners of the blogs are locked out of access.\n“It’s not clear yet whether the point of compromise is a WordPress vulnerability (users of the latest, patched version appear to be most affected), a malicious WordPress plugin, or if a common service provider may be the culprit. However, nearly every site owner affected so far reports that Network Solutions is their current Web hosting provider,” Krebs wrote.\n","tags":["alert","BLOGS","Malware","Security"],"title":"WordPress blog pages redirected to rogue site"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T17:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/google-developing-tablet-to-take-on-ipad/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed that his company is developing a tablet device based on the Android operating system, according to friends that spoke to the executive at a recent event in Los Angeles. The New York Times reports that Google has “been working with several hardware manufacturers,” and “hopes to make its own apps marketplace available for new slate-like devices.”\nAlthough Google is yet to publicly announce such a device, many signs point to its likely launch. For starters, Google has been rumored to be developing a slate device with HTC – the same company it brought Nexus One to market with – since January. Moreover, the company has already announced plans for an e-book store expected to launch within the next few months.\n","tags":["Android","Apple","Google"],"title":"Google Developing Tablet to Take on iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T17:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/barnes-nobles-nook-hits-best-buy-stores-next-week/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Barnes \u0026 Noble confirmed that its Nook e-reader is coming to Best Buy retail stores beginning April 18. Last week we reported on rumors that both the Nook and Amazon’s Kindle would be hitting retail stores, but it looks like the Barnes \u0026 Noble device has secured a presence at the large electronics retailer first.\nReleased last December, the Nook has already been available for purchase in Barnes \u0026 Noble retail and online stores. The move to a major consumer electronics retailer like Best Buy, however, potentially opens the device up to a whole new market.\n","tags":["Apple","Nook"],"title":"Barnes \u0026 Noble’s Nook Hits Best Buy Stores Next Week"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-12T17:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/12/steve-jobs-no-iphone-os-4-0-support-for-original-iphone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" In an e-mail to a German customer, Steve Jobs confirmed what most of us surmised last week: There will be no iPhone OS 4.0 support for original 2G iPhone owners.\nAt last week’s iPhone OS 4.0 announcement, Apple let iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch owners know that those devices will not support multitasking, although they will support other new features.\nFor owners of the nearly three-year-old original iPhone, it looks like iPhone OS 3.1.x will be the end of the line in terms of official OS updates. Jobs didn’t explain why Apple is no longer going to offer software updates for the original iPhone, though we suspect it’s part of a plan to phase out the product line.\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"Steve Jobs: No iPhone OS 4.0 Support for Original iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-10T11:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/10/breaking-twitter-acquires-tweetie/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Twitter has just announced that it has acquired Atebits, the company behind the popular Tweetie iPhone app and Mac desktop application.\nTweetie’s creator, Loren Brichter, will be joining the Twitter team as well. The app will be renamed “Twitter for iPhone” and be made free in the next few weeks. Twitter CEO Evan Williams explained the move in a blog post:\n“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world.”\n","tags":["Apple","News","trending","Twitter"],"title":"BREAKING: Twitter Acquires Tweetie"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-10T10:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/10/there-is-a-lot-of-spam-out-there/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"…and some of it masquerades as “marketing” and “newsletter” emails.\nIn March 2010, spam continued to account for a high percentage of all email traffic, peaking at 93.6% of all messages. The majority of this spam email was sent using certain tactics that were deployed to hijack unsecured computers and hide the senders’ identity. Recently, however, there has been an uptick in spam “marketing” and “newsletter” emails. These spam marketing and newsletter emails share one significant commonality with “regular” spam emails, which is that they are unwanted email messages sent to individuals who have no formal relationship with the message sender.\n","tags":["Hijack","report","review","spam","Security"],"title":"There is a Lot of Spam Out There…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-10T10:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/10/twitter-60-percent-growth-outside-u-s/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Aiming for one billion Twitterers by 2013?\nTwitter’s International Team Lead Engineer Matt Sanford has blogged on the company’s site that Twitter is seeing growth of over 60 percent in registrations outside the U.S.\nAfter setting up a Spanish language capability in November, the microblogging service saw a huge surge in registrations in Latin America, Sanford said. Sign-ups in India also spiked early in the year after several politicians and Bollywood movie stars began Tweeting.\n","tags":["report","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter: 60 percent growth outside U.S."},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-10T10:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/10/tensions-mount-between-google-and-european-telecoms-over-youtube/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" European telecommunication giants are preparing to fight Google over the data traffic and bandwidth that is consumed due to YouTube videos, according to a new report from the Financial Times. Their goal: to have Google pay them for the bandwidth YouTube and its other websites consume.\nTelefónica, S.A., France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom are all cited in the report as being part of a new coalition looking to change the current state of affairs, where users are charged for Internet access, rather than websites that provide the content they consume. These telecoms believe that Google should share its online ad revenue with network operators for carrying its content. YouTube is their biggest complaint: by far, it is the most data-intensive service that the search giant offers.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Tensions Mount Between Google and European Telecoms Over YouTube"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-10T00:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/10/the-big-change-coming-to-safari-5-kernel-level-multi-processing/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Apple has been challenging Google on many fronts this week — first with its mobile platform, then with its advertising platform. Earlier today, its developers launched the first volley in the battle’s third front, releasing the first public code for the next WebKit rendering and processing kernel that will likely drive the Safari 5 browser.\nWith Google Chrome using a reworked form of WebKit, the Apple team did something that perhaps any other free and open source developer would be publicly stoned for doing, but which Apple might just have the savvy to get away with: It openly one-upped another developer’s open contribution.\n","tags":["Apple","Browsers","compare","Firefox","Google Chrome","News","Safari"],"title":"The big change coming to Safari 5: Kernel-level multi-processing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T23:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/isohunt-goes-lite-for-visitors-from-the-u-s/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" One week ago, we heard that popular BitTorrent search engine Isohunt had been ordered by a U.S. judge to remove copyright-infringing content from their website.\nFollowing the court decision, Isohunt owner Gary Fung announced his resolution to replace Isohunt with a lite version that would turn the site into a very simple search engine, intentionally similar to Google, but specializing in torrents. This is now the case for visitors from the US, who are redirected to the new, lite version of the site. Fung explains the move to the site’s visitors:\n","tags":["News","Torrent","Yahoo"],"title":"Isohunt Goes Lite for Visitors From the U.S."},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T23:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/singers-exploit-kit-version-cve-2010-0806/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Well, well… looks like someone has been singing along to one of Jay Chow’s songs while coding an exploit that corresponds to a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which was addressed in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-018. The exploit that targets on the Peer Object component (iepeers.dll) in IE has been found in the wild, and today it was detected while attempting to exploit on the client browser.\nAfter decoding from a shellcode, it will download the payload and will be detected as Trojan:W32/KillAV.LD.\n","tags":["Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Singer's Exploit Kit version CVE-2010-0806"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T23:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/uk-passes-controversial-digital-economy-bill/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The United Kingdom parliament has passed the Digital Economy Bill, an extensive and controversial piece of legislation, by a vote of 189 to 47. The legislation encompasses online copyright infringement, Internet piracy, regulation of TV and radio, the classification of video games, regulations over ISPs, and a hodgepodge of other digital topics.\nThe bill, which you can read in its entirety here, is rather complicated and extensive, encompassing over 40 different sections covering online and digital media. Its goal is to clamp down on Internet piracy and illegal file-sharing, although its many critics believe that it is an overreaching piece of legislation. Its potential impact on public Wi-Fi and its harsh penalties for illegal file-sharers have been hotly debated.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"UK Passes Controversial Digital Economy Bill"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T23:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/trojanised-mobile-phone-game-makes-expensive-phone-calls/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We have received reports of a malicious Windows Mobile game that creates significant phone bills to affected users.\nThe game in question is called 3D Anti-terrorist action, and it’s manufactured by Beijing Huike Technology in China.\nThe game itself is a 3D first-person shooter.\nApparently some Russian malware author took the game and trojanized it. Then he uploaded the trojanized version to several Windows Mobile freeware download sites.\n","tags":["advice","Gaming","Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Trojanised Mobile Phone Game Makes Expensive Phone Calls"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T23:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/get-a-custom-colored-ipad-for-a-price-video/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Sure, that Apple-flavored brushed aluminum finish might work for most iPad owners, but what if you’re a unique snowflake whose extremely non-conformist identity must be reflected in every item of consumer electronics you own?\nEnter the folks at ColorWare, who want to help add some serious Technicolor flair to your shiny new Apple tablet. You can customize your own look and feel by picking your a color scheme for the back, logo and home button separately using the company’s web-based Design Studio.\n","tags":["Apple","colorware","customization"],"title":"Get a Custom Colored iPad… for a Price [VIDEO]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T23:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/dont-tell-spammers-that-youre-on-vacation/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has made the right decision to temporarily turn off Hotmail’s vacation (e.g., out-of-office) reply feature. Flip the switch off permanently, I say.\n“In our fight against spam, we sometimes have to make hard choices, and we had to make one this week. We discovered that spammers were using Hotmail’s automatic vacation reply feature to send spam from their Hotmail accounts,” Krish Vitaldevara, Windows Live Hotmail lead program manager, blogged late yesterday. I missed the post because of Apple’s iPhone OS 4 launch. I spotted the announcement first at LiveSide about an hour ago.\n","tags":["advice","Apple","Hotmail","Email","Microsoft","spam","Security"],"title":"Don't tell spammers that you're on vacation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T22:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/adobe-employee-go-screw-yourself-apple/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe has fired back against Apple’s recent ban on building iPhone apps via Flash. And this time, Adobe’s not pulling any of punches.\nIn a recent blog post on The Flash Blog, Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow goes on the offensive for seven paragraphs, ripping into Apple’s recent change to its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement that only allows for applications to be written in Objective-C, C, C++ or Javascript and executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine. In fact, the post was so strong that Adobe asked Brimelow to delete a segment.\n","tags":["3D","Adobe","Apple","Flash"],"title":"Adobe Employee: Go Screw Yourself, Apple"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T22:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/netflix-delays-more-new-releases-tides-you-over-with-library-content/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The new release rental is officially dead. As expected, Netflix has signed new deals with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studios Home Entertainment — similar to its deal with Warner Bros. — that delay new release rentals by 28 days and add new titles to its streaming collection.\nBoth deals go into effect later this month; Netflix will start the 28-day hold for Fox titles with Avatar’s release and Universal flicks with It’s Complicated.\n","tags":["3D","Entertainment","Apple","Netflix"],"title":"Netflix Delays More New Releases, Tides You Over with Library Content"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T22:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/google-search-rankings-now-consider-site-speed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Back in November, we started hearing murmurs that Google was considering whether or not to factor site speed into its search ranking algorithm. In a blog post today, the search giant confirms it is now adding site speed to its list of criteria that could affect your Google ranking.\nIt’s another step on Google’s long road toward achieving maximum speed and efficiency. The company even launched a Site Performance tool as part of its Webmaster Tools suite to help assess site performance statistics and make changes accordingly. Today’s blog post recommends a few other tools for evaluating your site’s speed as well, including the Firefox Add-on Page Speed, Yahoo’s YSlow and WebPagetest.\n","tags":["Google","News","Search","Yahoo"],"title":"Google Search Rankings Now Consider Site Speed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T21:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/iowa-bank-compromised-serving-exploits/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Northwestern Bank Online – Orange City is compromised and should not be visited until it’s clean.\nEmbedded in the side is a malicious iframe, as you can see in this screen shot:\n(Testing the site with Wapawet doesn’t work, since it chokes on the javascript emulation. However, the iframe is malicious.)\n","tags":["hack","report","Security"],"title":"Iowa bank compromised, serving exploits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T21:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/adobe-patch-tuesday-news-auto-updater-coming/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Adobe has announced that it will release an updater along with Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions 9.3.2 and 8.2.2 on patch Tuesday next week.\nOn the Adobe blog, Steve Gottwals wrote: “…we have been testing a new updater technology with select beta customers since our October 13, 2009 quarterly update. The purpose of the new updater is to keep end-users up-to-date in a much more streamlined and automated way.\n“During our quarterly update on January 12, 2010, and then again for an out-of-cycle update on February 16, 2010, we exercised the new updater with our beta testers. This allowed us to test a variety of network configurations encountered on the Internet in order to ensure a robust update experience. That beta process has been a successful one, and we’ve incorporated several positive changes to the end-user experience and system operation. Now, we’re ready for the next phase of deployment.”\n","tags":["Adobe","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Adobe Patch Tuesday news: auto updater coming"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T18:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/youtube-returns-blogs-some-link-love/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" You may have noticed that certain YouTube videos have a link below them pointing to a popular blog. This little “As seen on” link is Google’s way to thank blogs that have promoted popular videos on their site.\nIf you’re wondering why this or that site hasn’t been linked, it’s hard to say, since there are no clear guidelines as to when a site will be given a link-back. From YouTube’s official blog:\n","tags":["BLOGS","Google","link","News","Video","YouTube"],"title":"YouTube Returns Blogs Some Link Love"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T18:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/election-results-our-survey-says/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"…”click here to view”.\nYes, it seems almost anything is a target for money generating survey spam.\nIn this case, we start with a Youtube video:\nAnd we finish with this:\nEven better, these “fill in a survey to see the content” websites now pop up an additional message as you try to leave the page:\n“Help keep this content free. Please take one minute to complete a SPAM-free market research survey to gain access to this special content.”\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Election results? Our survey says…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T18:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/denial-of-availability-and-uk-anti-piracy-law/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There could be a denial-of-availability risk to the enterprise in the new anti-piracy law passed by the British Parliament yesterday. Employees using company machines to swap pirated files could trigger a suspension of Internet service.\nThe law is aimed at repeat offenders, however, employee misuse of company resources or botnet takeovers of machines for use as file-trading servers are a significant threat. At minimum, unintentionally offenders will have some paperwork to deal with when their ISP lets them know they’re in violation.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Denial of availability and UK anti-piracy law"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T17:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/google-gets-sued-by-photographers-over-google-books/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" .Google Books, although an admittedly noble project as Google has framed it, is also a beleaguered one. Attacked first by writers and publishers, the immense online library is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by several professional photographers’ organizations.\nThe American Society of Media Photographers, one of these groups, issued a statement today saying, “The suit[…] relates to Google’s illegal scanning of millions of books and other publications containing copyrighted images and displaying them to the public without regard to the rights of the visual creators.”\n","tags":["Google","lawsuit","Photographers"],"title":"Google Gets Sued by Photographers Over Google Books"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T17:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/farmvilles-newest-money-maker-brand-sponsored-crops/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Next week, FarmVille players will have the ability to grow peanuts, thanks to ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi and an Israeli candy brand.\nWe’re told this is the first time a FarmVille crop has been directly linked to a brand. Saatchi Interactive in Tel Aviv is working on a rollout campaign for Elite Taami Nutz, a peanut-filled variant of a popular Israeli chocolate bar.\nThe new crop will roll out with a simultaneous farm design competition on April 14. The peanuts cost 20 credits to buy, sell for 78 credits and can be harvested in 16 hours.\n","tags":["crops","Facebook","farmville","Gaming","MARKETING","Social Media"],"title":"FarmVille’s Newest Money-Maker: Brand-Sponsored Crops"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T17:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/no-multitasking-for-iphone-3g-and-early-ipod-touch-models/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" One of the finer points Steve Jobs let loose at the end of the iPhone OS 4.0 announcement today is that only the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch third generation (the most recent iteration from fall 2009) will have the capacity to support the iPhone OS 4.0’s new multitasking features.\nIn other words, owners of the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G, and first or second generation iPod touch models will not be able to multitask.\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"No Multitasking for iPhone 3G and Early iPod Touch Models"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T17:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/apple-reinvents-multitasking-for-the-iphone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Multitasking, the feature that has been the absolute top of every iPhone user’s want list –which, by proxy became a major marketing point for both Android and webOS — has made its way to iPhone OS 4.\n“We figured out how to implement multitasking for third party apps and avoid those things [battery life and lag]. So that’s what took so long,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs this morning.\nWhile it’s not actually full background processing, Apple has devised a way to reproduce the feeling. The company provided 7 APIs to developers which constitute the always-on services that apps can communicate with. These include: background audio, VoIP, Background Location, push notifications, local notifications, task completion, and fast app switching.\n","tags":["Android","Apple","News","Skype"],"title":"Apple reinvents multitasking for the iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T17:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/benign-feature-malicious-use/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"An interesting and unknown feature used by sysadmins around the world in some large corporate networks is the use of proxy-auto config (pac) files. This benign feature is accepted by all modern browsers and is described in detail here. It contains a function to redirect your connection to a specific proxy server.\nUnfortunately this simple and smart proxy technique are being largely used by brazilian malware writers to redirect infected users to malicious hosts serving phishing pages of financial institutions. A .pac script URL is configured in the browser, in the field “Use automatic configuration script”:\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Benign Feature, Malicious Use"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/steve-jobs-450000-ipads-sold-3-5-million-apps-downloaded/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Steve Jobs has just taken the stage at Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 press event. Before getting to the anticipated product announcements, Jobs took the opportunity to highlight the immediate success of the iPad, which launched on Saturday.\nAs of today, Apple has sold 450,000 iPads — 150,000 more than total sales on the first day. That’s a phenomenal figure on the hardware sales side, but Jobs wasted no time celebrating some the iPad’s software accomplishments as well.\n","tags":["Apple","report"],"title":"Steve Jobs: 450,000 iPads Sold, 3.5 Million Apps Downloaded"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/microsoft-group-shift-confirms-consumer-centric-approach-to-windows-phone-7/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Windows Mobile was never just a consumer product; it was also a significant player in handheld terminals, in-vehicle systems, and ruggedized consoles for business and industry.\nBut that whole branch of business-oriented Windows Mobile devices used to be overseen by Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business group (MCB), the same group responsible for Windows Mobile-powered consumer devices, despite the fact that they were very different.\nYesterday, David Wurster, senior product manager for Windows Embedded, announced that things will no longer be run that way. Now, all of the ruggedized and industry-specific device development will be the responsibility of the Windows Embedded Business group, regardless of their operating system (WinCE, WinMo.)\n","tags":["Microsoft","Mobile","Windows Phone","Windows Phone 7"],"title":"Microsoft group shift confirms consumer-centric approach to Windows Phone 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/the-mobile-game-with-a-trojan-thrown-in-for-free/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"TSince 27 March a new game called 3D Antiterrorist has been cropping up on quite a few international freeware sites offering downloads for Windows Mobile smartphones. As well as the game itself, the 1.5 MB archive contains the file reg.exe which is actually a Trojan that calls premium rate international numbers and leaves smartphone owners significantly out of pocket. As of 8 April this malicious program has been detected by Kaspersky Lab as Trojan.WinCE.Terdial.a. Let’s take a closer look at what happens.\n","tags":["Malware","Mobile","review","Security"],"title":"The mobile game with a Trojan thrown in for free"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/iphone-4-0-event-what-apple-might-announce/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Apple is hosting an event at 1 p.m. EST to unveil the next-generation iPhone 4.0 OS.\nTake a look at some of the features Apple might just unveil today:\nMultitasking *Last year, it was all about copy and paste; this year, it’s all about multitasking. While native iPhone applications like iPod, Mail and Safari can take advantage of backgrounding or multitasking (i.e., you can listen to music using the iPod app while playing a game or surfing the web), third-party applications can’t do this. While there are specific reasons that multitasking or backgrounding hasn’t been implemented on a system-wide level, that hasn’t stopped complaints from users and pundits alike. Since January we’ve been hearing rumors about multitasking coming to the next iPhone OS. While we’re not sure how Apple will implement this feature, we have a strong feeling that it is coming.\n","tags":["Apple"],"title":"iPhone 4.0 Event: What Apple Might Announce"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/ninjas-taking-over-linkedin/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Apparently, Facebook isn’t the only online sphere where ninjas are becoming a problem — The LinkedIn Blog reports that the job title “Ninja” has become more and more popular since 2002.\nAccording to LinkedIn, those who deem themselves “ninjas” tend to work with computers, social media, design, customer service, advertising and finance, and — as you can see from the chart below — their ranks have been steadily growing since the dawn of the century.\n","tags":["LinkedIn","report","Social Media"],"title":"Ninjas Taking Over LinkedIn"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/the-apple-adobe-war-escalates-using-flash-to-build-iphone-apps-banned/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Today, Apple revised its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to effectively ban the use of the Flash-to-iPhone converter.\nThroughout 2010, Steve Jobs and Apple made it very clear that they do not like Adobe. At all. They prominently left Flash off the iPad, instead promoting HTML5 at every opportunity.\nFor some time now, though, Adobe’s had a tool to circumvent Apple’s ban on Flash for the iPhone and iPad: the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Flash-to-iPhone converter, which would have allowed developers to create apps in Flash and then port them over into iPhone.\n","tags":["Adobe","Apple","Flash"],"title":"The Apple-Adobe War Escalates: Using Flash to Build iPhone Apps Banned"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/apples-game-center-will-catapult-iphone-into-video-gaming-big-leagues/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Today, Apple unveiled a major update to the iPhone OS which is expected to reach iPhone 3G/3GS and 2nd/3rd gen iPod users sometime this summer, and iPad users in the fall. While the banner feature of this release is its multitasking capability, the announcement that Apple will open a web-based gaming network akin to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has potential to be the biggest coup.\nGame Center lets users invite friends to play games, start multiplayer games through matchmaking, track achievements, and compare their high scores on a Web-based game network. This is a huge addition to the iPhone ecosystem which puts it on par with the two major home consoles, and actually catapults it past BOTH Nintendo’s Wii and its DS.\n","tags":["Apple","Gaming"],"title":"Apple's Game Center will catapult iPhone into video gaming big leagues"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T16:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/new-sex-and-the-city-2-trailer-hits-the-web/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Yahoo Movies has posted the newest trailer for the upcoming film, Sex and the City 2. The sequel to the 2008 box office hit comes to theaters on May 28, 2010.\nWhile _Sex and the City 2_ has the obligatory Facebook Fan Page, the film’s website is still pretty barren — at least for now.\nIn 2008, HBO and New Line put together a more interactive campaign, including a site that let you explore Carrie’s MacBook Pro, but we’ll have to wait and see if they do anything like that this time around.\n","tags":["movie trailers","Video","Yahoo"],"title":"New “Sex and the City 2″ Trailer Hits the Web"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T15:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/can-the-focus-of-spam-email-be-used-as-an-economic-indicator/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The National Bureau of Economic Research has previously indicated that the United States has been in a recession since December 2007. What is interesting to note here is that Symantec first reported that spammers were showing an interest in the slowdown of the economy in October and November of 2007, so this begs the question, “Can the focus of spam email be used as an economic indicator or barometer?” Let’s take a brief look at the recession (thus far) by looking through Symantec’s spam folder (a.k.a. the Symantec Global Intelligence Network).\n","tags":["advice","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Can the Focus of Spam Email be Used as an Economic Indicator?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T15:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/google-has-just-rewarded-me-with-1-million/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I don’t believe it!! This morning I’ve received an email sent by Google notifying me that I´ve won $950,000, so I think this will be the last post I’m going to write 😉\nWell, I haven’t taken part in any promotion of this kind and I’ve never heard that Google gives prizes just like that, but I can consider it as if I won the lottery.\nHere you have the content of the message:\n","tags":["advice","report","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Google has just rewarded me with $1 million!!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T15:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/sneak-peek-twitters-huge-redesign-is-coming-pic/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Now we know for certain: Twitter is working on a major redesign of its web interface. Twitter’s lead designer has just revealed a taste of what’s to come.\nDoug Bowman, the head of Twitter’s design team, posted a teaser picture displaying the new interface. While it doesn’t reveal much, it does show that the profiles are being overhauled, and so are the stats that are displayed on profiles.\nAs you can see from the image, new stats displayed on profiles include the amount of days you have been on Twitter, the average number of tweets you send per day, and the percentage of @replies recently.\n","tags":["News","Social Media","trending","Twitter"],"title":"Sneak Peek: Twitter’s “Huge Redesign” Is Coming [PIC]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T14:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/spammers-distributing-free-passes-for-ipl-matches/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The Indian Premier League 2010 is a huge attraction for the cricket-crazy population in India. These matches are packed with all the ingredients to entertain, and are capable of satisfying viewers’ hunger for more and more cricket matches. People are ready to buy tickets in all possible ways just to watch their local and international cricket stars play. Symantec was anticipating a spamming campaign against ticket sales during the initial period of the sporting extravaganza; however, it is just halfway through the event and still not too late to lure email users with offers related to IPL tickets.\n","tags":["advice","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Spammers Distributing Free Passes for IPL Matches"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T13:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/conquer-your-gmail-inbox-with-nested-labels/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Heavy Gmail label users will appreciate the latest experimental feature, available in Gmail Labs: Nested Labels, which let you organize your inbox into as many categories and subcategories as you like.\nTo enable it, open Settings – Gmail Labs, and enable the “Nested Labels” option. Now, if you want to create a child label – or a subfolder, if you will – you must name it with slashes (/). For example, you can create a label named “Friends”. A nested label for that label could be named “Friends/Workplace”. It would be nice to manipulate nested labels via drag and drop, but for now this naming scheme is the only way to do it.\n","tags":["Gmail","gmail labs","Google","nested labels","News"],"title":"Conquer Your Gmail Inbox With Nested Labels"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-09T13:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/09/official-twitter-app-for-blackberry-is-here/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" One month ago we heard about the official Twitter app for BlackBerry, which has been in the works for quite some time now, bringing features such as automatic URL-shortening, easy photo-sharing, push and message list integration and search filtered by geolocation.\nToday, the first public beta of the app is available in the BlackBerry App World. Based on the feedback from closed beta testing, the developers have added several additional features. These include notifications of new tweets and @replies/mentions, support for lists, profile editing and persionalization settings, and changing the font size and style.\nYou can get Twitter for BlackBerry here. How do you like it? Please, share your opinions in the comments!\n","tags":["BlackBerry","Mobile 2.0","Mobile Applications","News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Official Twitter App for BlackBerry is Here"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-08T22:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/08/patch-tuesday-next-week/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has put the PC-using world on notice that next Tuesday there will be 11 bulletins released addressing 25 vulnerabilities in Windows, Exchange and Office.\nJerry Bryant, Group Manager of Microsoft’s Response Communications, said:\n“I also want to point out to customers that we will be closing the following open Security Advisories with next week’s updates:\n— Microsoft Security Advisory 981169 – Vulnerability in VBScript could allow remote code execution.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Patch Tuesday next week"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-08T21:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/08/chinese-censorship-herding-cats-on-the-internet/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Search terms that are censored in China:\n“Tibet” “Tiananmen Square protests” “Carrot” Apaprently “carrot” has a Chinese character that is the same as the surname of President Hu Jintao.\nThe New York Times has run a great story by Shiho Fukada about Internet censorship in China, where the effort to control the content seen by 384 million Internet users who have 181 million blogs is like “herding cats.”\n“This is China’s censorship machine, part George Orwell, part Rube Goldberg: an information sieve of staggering breadth and fineness, yet full of holes; run by banks of advanced computers, but also by thousands of Communist Party drudges; highly sophisticated in some ways, remarkably crude in others,” Fukada wrote.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Chinese censorship: herding cats on the Internet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-08T15:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/08/diggs-iphone-app-gets-updated-nasty-crash-fixed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A couple of weeks ago, Digg (finally) launched its official iPhone application to much fanfare. Like all first versions, however, it suffered from a couple of glitches, some of which have been addressed in this latest update, which brings the version number to 1.1.0.\nThe list of improvements and fixes is as follows:\n– Closing the app on a Digg story page doesn’t result in a crash when reopening the app\n– A range of stability improvements allows the app to be used for longer periods without crashing\n– An “open in Safari” option for viewing websites from the story pages\n– The app opens on the last page viewed when it was last closed\n","tags":["Apple","Updates"],"title":"Digg’s iPhone App Gets Updated, Nasty Crash Fixed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-08T00:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/08/live-tv-on-the-ipad-coming-soon/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Qualcomm’s mobile broadcast television service called FLO TV existed for about five years under different wireless carrier brand names: Sprint TV, Verizon V Cast TV, and AT\u0026T MediaFLO TV. But the carriers didn’t push it very hard, so it did not break through into the public’s consciousness.\nBut then Qualcomm began advertising FLO TV on its own, with its own smartphone-sized pocket TVs made by HTC, and it looks like it is finally beginning to stick.\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"Live TV on the iPad coming soon"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-08T00:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/08/apple-splits-ipad-and-iphone-apps-in-itunes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" If you’ve updated iTunes to the latest version, 9.1, you may have noticed that iPad and iPhone apps are now separated by a tab at the top of the page. Switch tabs and you will pull up device-specific views of the App Store, which renders the entire experience a bit more elegant and better-organized than before.\nThis is a slight change from the old method, which previously divided apps into categories like “New and Noteworthy” and “Staff Favorites.” There is a downside to the new design, however: If you are browsing a category of iPhone apps and want to begin looking at similar apps for the iPad, you have to start your search over on the front page.\n","tags":["Apple","Mobile Applications"],"title":"Apple Splits iPad and iPhone Apps in iTunes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-08T00:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/08/ipad-spam-has-entered-the-building/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It was only a matter of time before the merest of “iPad” mentions on sites such as Twitter would result in autospammed messages like this:\nThese bots will fire a message claiming “we need someone to test and keep one iPad” (or simply “Free iPad here”) to anyone discussing the latest gadget to hit the streets, sending you to various promotional sites like the one below:\n","tags":["Apple","report","review","Social Media","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"iPad Spam has entered the building"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/foursquare-cracks-down-on-cheaters/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" For those of you armchair mayors who cheat with your Foursquare checkins, your time has come. The mobile social network has announced that checkins outside the immediate vicinity of the venue in question will no longer net points, badges or mayorships.\nFoursquare is now using your mobile phone’s GPS location (other tactics are used for phones without GPS) to verify your whereabouts to reward only those that happen near the actual place in question. Checkins that appear to take place far from the venue users are trying to checkin to trigger the “cheater code” and block incentives.\n","tags":["Foursquare","Trending"],"title":"Foursquare Cracks Down on Cheaters"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/number-of-infected-computers-spikes-in-korea/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hong Kong-based security firm Network Box reported that Korea was the country of origin for 31.1 percent of the malware on the Internet in March. In February the country only pumped out 8.9 percent, leading researchers to theorize that there has been a huge increase in infected machines there pushing out phishing spam.\nNetwork Box includes phishing in its calculations of monthly malware statistics. They also include North and South Korea as one country in their categories, but say the lack of public computers in the North means that South Korea is the country of origin for the bulk of the statistic.\n","tags":["Malware","News","report","Security"],"title":"Number of infected computers spikes in Korea"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/google-maps-for-blackberry-gets-a-major-upgrade/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" BlackBerry users rejoice, Google Maps for mobile just got a huge update that adds support for voice search, Google Buzz and more.\nGoogle Maps for BlackBerry has always been a feature rich application, but the additions to Google Maps 4.0 bring it more in line with their offerings for the iPhone and Google’s own Android platform.\nHere are some of the highlights of the new version:\nSearch by voice: Google’s voice search feature is now supported by all BlackBerry devices, meaning users can search using phrases or even addresses, just as users can on the iPhone or Android. Google Buzz: Google Buzz for mobile is also now available with a heavy focus on Buzz’s geolocation feature. This means that you can see what’s going on nearby and also post your own public Buzz messages. This instantly adds some Yelp-like functionality to the app. Personalized searches and starred item support: If you have Web History enabled on your Google Account, you can save time typing search queries in maps.google.com because Google will provide you with suggestions based on your previous searches. So if you found a place at home but didn’t write down the number, you can just type in a few letters on your phone and it will pop right up. You can also synchronize your starred items between your computer and your phone, which is great for keeping track of places you want to visit or need to get directions to. Labs: Google Maps 4.0 supports Labs features like the terrain layer and scale adjustments. Find nearby businesses: You can view nearby businesses by selecting a point on a map or your current location. ","tags":["Android","BlackBerry","blackberry apps","Google Maps","Mobile"],"title":"Google Maps for BlackBerry Gets a Major Upgrade"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/kid-racks-up-1400-debt-in-farmville/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Oh dear — looks like it’s time to add FarmVille to the list of internet addiction scares after a 12-year-old UK boy has amassed £905 in FarmVille debt. About £288 of that came from the boy’s own savings, while £625 was billed to his horrified mother’s credit card.\nThe debt — which is equivalent to about $1400 USD — was racked up in all of about two weeks’ worth of gameplay. In the popular casual Facebook game, players can spend real money to accrue virtual currency and items. It’s a business that’s booming enough to garner the game’s developer Zynga an estimated valuation as high as $5 billion.\n","tags":["Business","Facebook","farmville","Gaming","microtransactions","Social Media","virtual goods","Zynga"],"title":"Kid Racks Up $1400 Debt in FarmVille"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/fakeav-gang-targets-farmville-1-facebook-game/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Farmville has been launch in June 2009 and after month it has been rated at #8 in Top 25 Facebook Games. Farmville has become the most popular games on Facebook. It has been rank at #1 Facebook Game on August 2009 up until now.\nFarmville users can’t get enough of farming. They make impressive hay bales art farm just like the Image below.\nFake AV gang launches its attack to the Farmville users by poisoning Yahoo and Google search results using the following keywords (see Image 1):\n","tags":["advice","Facebook","Firefox","Gaming","Malware","report","review","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"FakeAV Gang Targets Farmville – #1 Facebook Game"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/iphone-os-4-0-features-list/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Just after the launch of iPad, Apple has just announced iPhone OS 4.0 Event at 8th April 10 AM PT. A lot more speculations are being made about the upcoming features of iPhone OS 4.0 Following are some most closest guesses on the features of apple iPhone OS 4.0\nKey Features iPhone OS 4.0 There will be multi-touch gestures support everywhere on iphone OS 4.0 Multitasking will be there to allow to run third party apps in background Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through iPhone OS easier and more efficient. The update will be most probably available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS There might be some new way to sync contacts and calendar applications. Lets what all out of these features listed above to be come out as truth, on 8th April 2010 at iPhone OS 4.0 Event\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"iPhone OS 4.0 Features List"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/china-denies-connection-to-high-level-hacking/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"“Shadows in the Cloud” hang over the otherwise sunny PRC\nA spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign ministry has tried to minimize a report from investigators in Toronto that hackers based in China breached computers of the Indian Government and others and downloaded classified material.\nThe Information Warfare Monitor and the Shadowserver Foundation extensively documented an eight-month investigation that revealed a network of infected government and military computers. The net was controlled from servers in China and stole a variety of classified documents. They posted their 52-page report, “Shadows in the Cloud: investigating cyber espionage 2.0” today on scribd.com\n","tags":["hack","News","report","review","Security"],"title":"China denies connection to high-level hacking"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T23:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/poc-is-out-a-worm-that-spreads-via-pdfs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A blog contributor who goes by the name of “jeremy” has continued to research the possibilities inherent in the recently discovered .pdf-file weakness that could enable the execution of code. Jeremy posted earlier this week that he had created a proof of concept .pdf file that could spread to other .pdf files on a system or network (which makes it a worm).\n“Within the proof of concept I infected a single benign PDF file from another PDF file, but this proof of concept could easily be modified to recursively traverse a users computer directories to find and infect all PDF files on that users computer and/or accessible to that user at the time of execution with any payload of my choosing.” He wrote on the SudoSecure.net site.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Firefox","Foxit","Malware","PDF","review","Security"],"title":"POC is out: a worm that spreads via PDFs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/picasa-web-albums-now-lets-you-have-10000-albums/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Here’s a nice little update for Picasa Web Albums users – Google has upped the previous limit of 1,000 albums per account to 10,000. When it comes to storage space for your photos, it’s the same (7.76 GB, shared between Gmail, Google Docs, and Picasa Web Albums), but you can still buy more at very affordable prices.\nThe default view, however, still only shows a hundred albums. If you have more and want to see the rest, click on either “show more albums” or “show all albums” at the bottom of your page.\n","tags":["Google","News","Photos","picasa","Picasa Web Albums"],"title":"Picasa Web Albums Now Lets You Have 10,000 Albums"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/how-to-take-screenshots-on-ipad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Apple iPad is launched few days back and many tips and tutorials related to it have started appearing all over the web. We’ve a quick iPad tip – Taking screenshots in iPad.\nThe way of taking a screenshot on an iPad is almost same, as it is on iPhone and iPod touch. Follow the steps below to do it:\nOpen any app or window of which you want to take the screenshot in your iPad.\n","tags":["Apple","Tricks"],"title":"How to take Screenshots on iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/aols-850-million-mistake-bebo-to-be-shut-down-or-sold/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Just two years after acquiring social network Bebo for $850 million, the newly-independent AOL has decided to abandon its social networking investment, either by selling it or simply shutting it down.\nAccording to PaidContent, AOL sent a message to employees earlier today stating that it “is not in a position” to support Bebo:\n“The strategy we set in May 2009 leverages our core strengths and scale in quality content, premium advertising and consumer applications, positioning us for the next phase of growth of the Internet. As we evaluate our portfolio of brands against our strategy, it is clear that social networking is a space with heavy competition, and where scale defines success. Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space. AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking.”\nAOL is committed to working quickly to determine if there are any interested parties for Bebo and the company’s current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation by the end of May 2010.”\n","tags":["AOL","ICQ","News"],"title":"AOL’s $850 Million Mistake: Bebo to be Shut Down or Sold"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/chrome-growing-in-popularity-faster-than-rival-browsers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Chrome’s share of the browser market is growing at a breakneck pace, according to data from Net Applications. Between February and March, Google’s browser rose to capture a full 6.1% share of the market, maintaining its lead over browsers such as Safari and Opera and closing the gap between Firefox, which currently holds a 24.5% share.\nWhile most browsers rose a fraction of a percent, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continued to decline, losing almost a whole percent over the past month alone.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Google Chrome","report"],"title":"Chrome Growing in Popularity Faster Than Rival Browsers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/police-arrest-70-in-romania-for-internet-fraud/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A year-long international investigation concluded in the last few weeks with 700 police in Romania launching raids and taking into custody 70 people from three gangs. Those arrested were part of a four-year long wave of Internet auction fraud that victimized 800 people and netted over $1 million (US).\nYesterday Romanian Police released information on the raids which were organized by prosecutors at the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism. The police served 101 warrants in 12 Romanian cities.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Police arrest 70 in Romania for Internet fraud"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/hacking-the-matrix/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I could talk about how The Matrix was a pretty big deal for me back in the day, or how The Matrix Online is (to date) the only MMORPG I ever liked enough to pay a monthly subscription for, or how I think people doing Kung Fu in bullet time is still the best thing ever.\nMostly, I’ll just show you this:\nAnd this:\nIs there a glitch in the Matrix? You bet. Unfortunately it seems the website of one of the actors from Reloaded / Revolutions (Harry Lennix, who played Commander Lock) has been hacked and is now, bizarrely, the scene of some Cyber Kung-Fu gone wrong as two warring factions go to, er, war.\n","tags":["hack","Hijack","review","Security"],"title":"Hacking the Matrix"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/windows-7-sp1-leaks-available-now/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" In March, the Windows team announced the upcoming release of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2, but did not set a date of availability.\nAt the time, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc said, “For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 for Windows 7 will, however, deliver an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced in the server-side with SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2.”\n","tags":["AMD","Download","Microsoft","News","Torrent","Updates"],"title":"Windows 7 SP1 leaks, available now"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T22:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/nintendo-and-google-making-a-search-game-for-wii/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" This just in from the “Strange Bedfellows” department: apparently Nintendo has enlisted the help of Google to create a Wii game where players compete to guess the most popular search terms.\nThe game, entitled Ando Kensaku, will be out in Japan on April 29 and won’t likely see much of a release elsewhere given its quirkiness. The screenshot above gives you an idea of the cutesy avatar style of the title, featuring 14 mini-games where several players can choose from a multiple choice search term spread.\n","tags":["Gaming","Google"],"title":"Nintendo and Google Making a Search Game for Wii"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T21:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/java-applet-attack-targets-xbox-gamers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"If you like downloading or installing programs on your PC related to XBox gaming, you might want to take heed of this writeup. There’s a fake application kit in circulation that allows an attacker to create a website claiming to be an XBox Live application that takes the form of a Java install.\nUpon visiting a site related to this scam, the end-user will see a blank webpage with nothing other than a Java notice and a fake Softpedia award at the bottom of the screen:\n","tags":["Apple","Firefox","Malware","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Java Applet Attack Targets XBox Gamers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T21:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/google-code-jam-2010-registration-now-open/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Taken from Official Google:\nLet’s say that you have x different stocks, and the plots of their prices over time. You want to print them in newspaper, printing multiple plots on the same chart to save space. But here’s the catch: no two plots on the same chart can overlap, lest the readers be confused. Look at the plots and figure out the smallest number of charts required.\nLooking for a challenge like the riddle above? And I mean an exciting brain-twisting and turning kind of challenge. I mean competing with fellow coders from around the world for top bragging rights kind of challenge.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google Code Jam 2010 registration now open"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T16:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/google-buzz-educates-teens-about-privacy-video/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has released a new video aimed at teens about making Google Buzz a safer experience.\nThe video was released in conjunction with the new Buzz privacy reset issued yesterday. This new focus on privacy and privacy options comes amidst class-action lawsuits and a request for FTC investigation regarding the service’s launch and explanation to consumers.\nAlthough aimed at teens, the tips are good for anyone using Buzz to keep in mind.\n","tags":["advice","Google","Video"],"title":"Google Buzz Educates Teens About Privacy [VIDEO]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T16:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/xbox-360-system-update-finally-adds-usb-storage/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"As expected, Microsoft has pushed out a mandatory update to the Xbox 360 today, which adds support for USB storage devices, expanding the memory capacity of the five-year old video game console.\nThe update will ostensibly allow any FAT32-formatted USB storage device between 1GB-16GB in size to be used to save profiles, game saves, and downloadable content. There are, however, a number of caveats, which mean users can’t just plug anything in and have it work.\n","tags":["Gaming","Microsoft","News","Updates"],"title":"Xbox 360 system update finally adds USB storage"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-07T15:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/07/security-awareness-many-levels-many-things/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Rob VandenBrink has written a piece on the SANS web site Diary (“The Many Paths to Security Awareness”) with an interesting take on the very large topic of computer security awareness.\n“Security Awareness does not mean the same thing to everyone in a company,” sums up his point.\n“From a Security Awareness perspective the blanket term ‘end user’ grows to encompass many audiences – not only folks with basic desks and phones, but developers, senior managers, salespeople, engineers, health-care professionals, all kinds of people with different concerns, different goals, and a different set of reasons/excuses for exceptions to one thing or another,” he wrote.\n","tags":["report","review","survey"],"title":"Security awareness: many levels, many things"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-04T11:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/04/twitter-creators-credit-card-scanner-comes-to-ipad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The iPad already has an app for credit card transactions thanks to Twitter creator Jack Dorsey’s Square project.\nOriginally planned for the iPhone, the app works with a peripheral credit card scanner that attaches to the headphone jack. Once the scanner is in place, you can use your iPad as a mobile cash register.\nCustomers will be impressed by the multi-touch interface, and they will be able to sign for their purchases on the screen. The app then verifies the credit card transactions through Square’s servers for a flat fee plus a small percentage of the sale.\n","tags":["Apple","News","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter Creator’s Credit Card Scanner Comes to iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T22:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/fbi-will-investigate-pa-school-district-webcam-spying/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The FBI has said it will be checking to see if any federal wiretapping or computer-related laws were broken by a Pennsylvania school district in connection with an incident in which someone turned on the webcam in a school-issued computer and spied on a student in his own home.\nThe incident occurred in Lower Merion School District, located in Montgomery County near Philadelphia. The county district attorney also is investigating.\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"FBI will investigate Pa. school district webcam spying"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T21:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/nintendo-wants-to-try-its-hand-at-3d-again/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A very dodgy looking PDF file appeared on Nintendo’s Japanese investor relations site with the title “Launch of New Portable Game Machine” (PDF available here).\nIn the document, Nintendo quietly announced that it will be launching “Nintendo 3Ds” during the fiscal year ending in March 2011. The new handheld gaming console will support 3D effects without the need for special viewing glasses, and Nintendo will talk more about it at the E3 conference in June.\n","tags":["3D","Gaming","News"],"title":"Nintendo wants to try its hand at 3D again"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T21:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/are-you-reading-this-with-internet-explorer-version-6/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Virus Bulletin is reporting that a recent survey it conducted found that about one out of five people are still using the dangerously-out-of-date version six of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.\nThere are probably a number of reasons for this:\n— They are using IE6 at work with legacy systems that require IE6 (or IT never got around to updating the company’s browsers.)\n— They are using IE6 at home and don’t know that IE6 is frighteningly insecure.\n— They are using IE6 at home and don’t know that there is such a thing as an update to browser software.\n— They are using IE6 at home and don’t know there is such a thing as computer security.\n","tags":["advice","Browsers","Firefox","Internet Explorer"],"title":"Are you reading this with Internet Explorer version 6?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T21:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/adobe-to-launch-creative-suite-5-april-12/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A spokesperson for Adobe told us that on the morning of April 12 at 11:00 a.m. EDT, the company will hold a global online launch event for all of the components of its Creative Suite 5.\nAmong the most anticipated new components — or as Adobe tends to present them in its periodic table, “elements” — is a vastly improved HD video rendering engine called Mercury. Unlike other manufacturers, Adobe tends to retain the cool names for its products and platforms even after public release. Mercury will utilize the graphics processing power of video cards to expedite the decoding and playback of HD-encoded formats, especially for the Premiere Pro editor.\n","tags":["Adobe","AMD","News"],"title":"Adobe to launch Creative Suite 5 April 12"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T20:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/rogue-toolbars-serve-up-facebook-phishing-pages/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"There are a number of Toolbars out there in the wild with a nasty sting in the tail for anybody using them to login to Facebook. We’ve seen two of these so far; it’s possible there are more.\nPromoted as toolbars that allow you to cheat at popular Zynga games such as Mafia Wars, they appear to be normal at first glance with a collection of links to various websites and other features common to this type of program.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Firefox","Malware","Phishing","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Rogue Toolbars Serve Up Facebook Phishing Pages"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T20:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/ipads-file-system-suggests-new-apple-devices-on-the-way/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Although Apple rivals the Fortress of Solitude when it comes to unreleased products — remember all of the speculation around the iPad? — the Cupertino-based company does leave clues about what is to come. A look into the iPad OS’s file system suggests that we can expect not one, but two iPhones in the near future, along with the next-generation iPod touch and the next-generation iPad. In the configuration, you can see a list of devices based on the iPhone OS model. However, there have been some new additions to this list following the iPad’s launch: iPhone3,2; iPhone3,3; iPod4,1 and iProd2,1. For reference, the current model of the iPhone is 3,1, the current iPod Touch is 3,1 and the current iPad is iPad 1,1. You may recall that Apple used the iProd 0,1 tag as a placeholder for the iPad before it was released. Our guess is that iProd 2,1 refers to the second generation iPad.\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"iPad’s File System Suggests New Apple Devices on the Way"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T20:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/apple-diversifies-into-online-pharmaceuticals/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Spammers have decided that in order for Apple to meet sky-high growth expectations from its shareholders, Apple needs to diversify into selling drugs online.\nThe spam looks similar to the following message below:\nSpammers have setup various hacked sites to redirect traffic to online drug stores. However, the spammers are probably frowning/pouting now as Sophos has once again thwarted their plans.\n","tags":["alert","Apple","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Apple Diversifies Into Online Pharmaceuticals"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T19:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/hacking-forum-or-a-sting-operation/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Though it is true that malware is getting more and more sophisticated I am sometimes surprised by the lack of skills coming from wannabe botnet operators. Today, I stumbled upon a hacker’s forum which nicely demonstrates just how low is the technical knowledge level of the forum members.\nA search for “Zeus” produces several hundred results, many of them surprisingly basic, looking for help with installing a Zeus server or an advice about the best bulletproof hosting.\n","tags":["Google Chrome","hack","Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Hacking forum or a sting operation?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T19:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/fake-updates-install-backdoors/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Our good friends at Hanoi, Viet Nam, -based security firm Bkis have written about an interesting malcode lure: Trojans masquerading as updates for popular applications such as Adobe, Java or Windows.\nThe fake updates are distributed with icons of the application they’re impersonating.\nAnalyst Nguyen Cong Cuong wrote: “In addition, on being executed, they immediately turn on the following services: DHCP client, DNS client, Network share and open port to receive hacker’s commands.”\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Fake updates install backdoors"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T19:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/social-media-is-exposure-for-password-guessing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Inquirer security news site were reporting that the 25-year-old arrested by French police for hacking a Twitter data base and accessing U.S. President Barak Obama’s account guessed the admin’s password.\nThe unemployed man, who went by the handle “Hacker Croll.” is not a genius, the news site concluded.\n“Apparently it was a doddle to do. He simply guessed people’s passwords by working them out from information on their blogs or online pages they had created about themselves,” it said.\n","tags":["advice","Facebook","News","Password","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Social media is exposure for password guessing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T19:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/help-the-homeless-feed-the-phishers/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Well, this is unfortunate. In the UK, they have something called “The Big Issue”, which is a magazine designed to help the homeless get back into society via a legitimate income. It sells around 300,000 copies a week and is listed as the third-favourite newspaper of young British people aged 15 to 24, according to Wikipedia. At this moment in time, The Big Issue website is playing host to a French Paypal Phish – they have a zipped copy of the Phish uploaded to the server, and a live Phish directory too:\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Help The Homeless, Feed the Phishers?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T19:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/journey-to-the-center-of-the-pdf-stream/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Malware authors use numerous unconventional techniques in their attempts to create malicious code that is not detected by antivirus software. As malicious code analysts, though, it is our job to analyze their creations, and as such we have to be constantly vigilant for the latest tricks that the malware authors employ.\nWhile looking at some PDFs yesterday, something suspicious caught my eye. The PDF file format supports compression and encoding of embedded data, and also allows multiple cascading filters to be specified so that multi-level compression and encoding of that data is possible. The PDF stream filters usually look something like this:\n","tags":["Adobe","advice","alert","Malware","PDF","review","Security"],"title":"Journey to the Center of the PDF Stream"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T18:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/the-phishing-of-indian-job-sites/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Despite the global economic slowdown, India witnessed a high number of new jobs in the country during the first quarter of 2010. With the job market looking positive, job sites seem to have benefited with more users accessing their websites.\nBelow is a screenshot of a phishing website that takes advantage of the brand of a popular Indian job site:\nThe increased number of candidates seeking jobs in India has led to the launch of phishing attacks on Indian job sites. The phishing page in the above example is asking for potential employers’ login credentials. The phishing website was created on servers located in the Netherlands. The credentials consist of a username and password as well as the employer’s email ID and password. After stealing these credentials, fraudsters send targeted spam messages to the employers. The spam message states that the employer is required to pay an amount to upgrade or continue his access of particular recruitment solutions. The link provided to make the payment leads to a phishing page that asks for confidential information such as credit card numbers, pin number, etc. Attackers also masquerade as the employer to send spam containing fake job opportunities to job seeking candidates—an action that means the attackers are always seeking financial gain.\n","tags":["advice","alert","hack","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"The Phishing of Indian Job Sites"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T18:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/arrests-on-the-rise/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Lots of little newsworthy updates recently . . . they’ve been well-covered elsewhere, but we wanted to make sure our readers saw them as well.\nRussia: Safe Haven no more? One of the constant complaints that we hear is “the criminal is probably in Russia”, as an excuse for why a case is not worth investigating. Back on November 11, 2009, we posted a story The $9 Million World-wide Bank Robbery, where VIKTOR PLESHCHUK, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia; SERGEI TŠURIKOV, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; and OLEG COVELIN, 28, of Chişinău, Moldova were charged with leading the robbery, which actually occurred in 2008. This week the Financial Times has revealed that Viktor Pleshchuk was arrested by the FSB. Their story leads with:\n","tags":["Facebook","hack","News","rogue software","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Arrests on the Rise"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T18:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/persistent-domain-renewal-scam-alive-and-kicking/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A friend of mine forwarded a suspicious email message recently. I’ve replaced the domain, order number, etc. below:\nI validated for my friend that the email was bogus. The domain was not held by Domain Registry of America (DROA), and never had been. The domain was not expiring in the next 90 days. Later he received a follow-up email:\nThe scam attempts to get domain holders to transfer service and pay accordingly. It seems this scam has been around for at least eight years, though it has morphed over time. Apparently the DROA has chosen to test the 2003 judgment by the Federal Trade Commission (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm).\nOne thing of interest here is the two-staged approach: The first message requires no action by the recipient, but the second message tells the user to obtain and hand over the keys to the castle.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","review","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Persistent Domain-Renewal Scam Alive and Kicking"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T18:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/be-wary-of-steam-password-stealers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There are a couple of programs in circulation at the moment designed to steal Steam account login credentials. People can have a lot of money invested in Steam purchases (if you purchase PC games online Steam is probably the best digital delivery service around), and it isn’t really the greatest thing in the world to have one stolen.\nSteam is a popular thing to have in webcafes, and the company behind it actually support this in a very big way. These particular infection files would cause the most trouble on the networks of netcafes with minimal security in place, allowing chancers to install files with a USB stick, let the stealer grab account logins then come back later to collect the passwords.\n","tags":["Malware","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Be wary of Steam password stealers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T16:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/jon-and-kate-plus-eight-plus-fake-codecs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"One our researchers was reading the comments about Dancing With The Stars, and Kate Gosselin’s performance (He’s a huge fan … don’t ask), when he noticed a link to a URL shortening service. Given that it was advertising a video of Kate Gosselin topless, he astutely realised that was a bit suspicious, and checked it out inside a nice, safe virtual pc. Indeed, the shortening service immediately transferred to a website showing a picture of Kate at the beach…\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","review","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Jon and Kate Plus Eight … plus fake codecs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T15:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/sharing-vs-your-privacy-on-facebook/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":" Facebook is, by its nature, a social experience.\nBut as the undisputed king of social networking expands ways for its users to interact, it’s raising more questions about how much of their information is made available to people they don’t know.\nIn some cases, users may not even realize it’s happening.\nOne example is the hundreds of thousands of developers approved by Facebook to create games, quizzes and other applications. Some of those developers are able to access basic information about users after a Facebook friend has started using their application.\n","tags":["Facebook","privacy","Social Media"],"title":"Sharing vs. your privacy on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T15:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/when-is-a-picture-not-worth-1000-words/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"When it is not actually a picture but an obfuscated malicious VB script!\nThat’s the story with W32/VBSAuto-F — yet another autorun worm that sets a number of self-starting registry entries, spreads via USB drives, and downloads further malware. The worm embeds code in a JPEG comment field of an ambiguously named file “image.jpg” or “imwin.jpg”.\nPreviewing such files as images remains innocuous, as picture viewers tend not to execute meta data by default. This is unfortunately not the case when the file is run through the VB script engine, which is happy to interpret the same JPEG comment 0xFFFE header bytes to indicate Little-Endian UTF-16 encoded data and execute the remaining portion of the file as code.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"When is a picture not worth 1000 words?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T15:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/4-4-percent-in-china-have-no-av-that-might-not-be-too-bad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The number for the rest of the world might be 26 percent\nThere is a story making headlines on the computer security news sources today about estimates that 4.4 percent of Chinese Internet users have no anti-virus software, up from 3.9 percent last year. That’s about 17 million machines. The numbers came from surveying by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) and China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT).\n","tags":["advice","antivirus","report","review"],"title":"4.4 percent in China have no AV – that might not be too bad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T14:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/giant-facebook-database-destroyed-amid-legal-threat/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"New Scientist is reporting that a massive database culled from the public profiles of 210 million Facebook users has been destroyed before its anticipated — and controversial — release to researchers.\nPete Warden, a former Apple engineer, reluctantly deleted the data after Facebook threatened legal action, saying he could not afford to fight a lawsuit. He said Facebook was not aware that such information was available and that the flaw is being patched.\n","tags":["Apple","Facebook","News","report","review","Social Media"],"title":"Giant Facebook database destroyed amid legal threat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T13:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/spam-web-sites-moving-from-cn-to-ru/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Scum on the run\nSecurity blogger Brian Krebs is reporting some good numbers that show spammers are no longer registering their domains in China (.cn) since that country started requiring actual on-paper registrations and business licenses, which precludes anonymous registration.\nAND their new top-level domain of choice, Russia (.ru), is going to make life for sca/spammers difficult there. “Russia’s Coordination Center for domain registration will require individuals and businesses applying for a .ru address to provide a copy of a passport or legal registration papers.” Krebs wrote.\n","tags":["alert","report","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Spam web sites moving from .cn to .ru"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T13:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/will-fuzzing-save-civilization-as-we-know-it/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Tom Gallagher, senior security test lead with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, was extensively quoted in news stories today as he described how his group found 1,800 software flaws in Office 2010 by running millions of “fuzzing” tests.\nAccording to ComputerWorld, “Microsoft was able to find such a large number of bugs in Office 2010 by using not only machines in the company’s labs, but also under-utilitized or idle PCs throughout the company. The concept isn’t new: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home) project may have been the first to popularize the practice, and remains the largest, but it’s also been used to crunch numbers in medical research and to find the world’s largest prime number.\n","tags":["Apple","Browsers","Firefox","Microsoft","News","report"],"title":"Will fuzzing save civilization as we know it?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T12:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/want-to-make-easter-even-more-magical-click-me/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"As Easter approaches, spam related to this upcoming holiday is expected. Spammers didn’t send malicious greetings like last year—they sent out various product promotion ads instead. One particular coupon promotion page offers recipients a free coupon for digital TV service for Easter. A domain attack was observed from this spam attack, and the offer page changed to different product coupons on a daily basis.\n1 2 _From: “The Easter Bunny” \u003ceasterbunny removed\u003e Subject: How to make this Easter even more magical…\u003c/easterbunny\u003e@\u003e_ ","tags":["alert","spam","Security"],"title":"Want to Make Easter Even More Magical? Click me!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T12:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/wordpress-official-app-for-ipad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"iPad apps seems to be getting more faster approved than apple iphone apps, we have seen many iPad apps being released. WordPress official app has been released for iPad today. As there lot more space on iPad for bloggers to write a web blog post through this wordpress app, this app seems to be useful.\nHowever it does not have any new features so it is just the iphone app being ported for iPad on apple ipad store, Below are some screenshots with which you can get the idea on how does this app will look like on iPad.\n","tags":["Apple","Download","Offer","WordPress"],"title":"WordPress Official App For iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T12:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/the-first-ipad-and-ipad-3g-teardowns-pics/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Want to know what makes Apple’s iPad tick? Well wait no longer: thanks to the FCC and some analysis from the people over at iFixit, we now know what the internal guts of the iPad look like.\nThe Federal Communications Commission has publicly posted a series of images and documents sent to it by Apple — they are documents ranging from calibration tests to photos of the internal components. Apple requested that these pictures not be posted for 180 days, but clearly that request was denied.\n","tags":["Apple","teardown"],"title":"The First iPad and iPad 3G Teardowns [PICS]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T11:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/microsoft-office-on-ipad-dont-hold-your-breath/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" There’s at least one company that isn’t scrambling to get an iPad app ready for launch day, and that company is Microsoft.\nStephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company will “wait and see” how iPad sales perform before adapting Microsoft Office 2010 for the device. “We never say never, but we have no current plans [to develop a version of Office for the iPad],” Elop claimed.\n","tags":["Apple","Google","Google Docs","Microsoft","Microsoft Office","YouTube"],"title":"Microsoft Office on iPad? Don’t Hold Your Breath"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-03T11:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/03/nokia-defaced/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I’m almost certain this shouldn’t be on the Nokia.de webspace, lurking under the “online.nokia.de” subdomain:\nDon’t worry though, Admin – they “just changed your index”.\nThis isn’t the first time Nokia domains have come under attack. The above defacement – by an Albanian hacker called “Spammer” – seems eager to let the webmaster know they can help with the bugs, but I’m pretty sure an email would have been just as useful. Nokia.de have been notified of the defacement, but I’ve had no word back as of yet.\n","tags":["advice","alert","hack","Security"],"title":"Nokia.de(faced)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-02T22:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/02/google-is-armed-for-ipad-launch/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google today announced its strategy for delivering services on the iPad, and unveiled a new mobile Gmail interface optimized for bigger touchscreens. Since the iPad lies somewhere between a notebook and a smartphone, the Mountain View search company is taking a hybrid approach, offering some services in their desktop format, some in their mobile format, and some as standalone apps.\n“We’re particularly excited by how tablet computers create the opportunity for new kinds of user interaction,” Punit Soni, Product Manager for Google Mobile wrote in the official Google blog. “Here on the mobile team, we often talk about how mobile devices are sensor-rich: they can sense touch through their screens, see with a camera, hear through a microphone, and they know where they are with GPS. The same holds true for tablet computers, and we’re just starting to work through how our products can become even better on devices like the iPad.”\n","tags":["Apple","Google","News","YouTube"],"title":"Google is armed for iPad launch"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-02T22:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/02/eliminate-two-thirds-of-comp-security-risk/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Don’t run your PC with admin privileges\nSometimes in life you know something is a risk, but you don’t know how BIG a risk it is until somebody actually checks it out. There was a German scientist in Russia who repeated Ben Franklin’s kite-in-the-thunder-storm experiment but didn’t live to write up his results.\nLos Angeles security firm BeyondTrust has released an analysis of Microsoft’s 75 security bulletins last year. They came to the startling conclusion that if users had operated their computers without administrative rights they would have eliminated 64 percent of their risk from Microsoft vulnerabilities!\n","tags":["advice","report","review","Security"],"title":"Eliminate two thirds of comp security risk!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-02T22:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/02/stumbleupon-app-for-ipad/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The most popular social bookmarking site ‘StumbleUpon’ has just released its free app for Apple iPad. iPad is ready to be officially launched tomorrow i.e. April 3, 2010. A collection of few good apps for iPad can now be seen on iTunes App store.\nStumbleUpon iPad app helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 8 million+ other web surfers with interests similar to you.\n","tags":["Apple","Download"],"title":"StumbleUpon App for iPad"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-02T21:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/02/how-the-fake-icade-could-become-real/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":" Games are big on the iPhone — the majority of apps on the App Store are games, and games are regularly among the top-selling paid and free apps.\nWith the iPad, Apple’s new, and larger, touch-screen device, gaming on Apple’s mobile devices is poised to get even bigger (pardon the pun).\nBut even with the touch screen and accelerometer inputs, some games just need more traditional controls, like those offered by joysticks or D-pads, those four-direction paddles on many video game controllers.\n","tags":["Apple","icade"],"title":"How the fake ‘iCade' could become real"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-02T21:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/02/firefox-claims-30-percent-market-share/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mozilla.org has made public a report that says its Firefox browser has 30 percent market share worldwide. Assuming it’s true, that is a six percent increase since a news story last November.\nThe Mozilla Metrics report 1Q2010 says the browser has 39.2 percent penetration in Europe (152.7 million users) and 29 percent in the U.S. (100 million users.) Mozilla claims 350 million users worldwide. Adoption is quickest in Russia (20 percent increase in the first quarter) the report said.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","News","report"],"title":"Firefox claims 30 percent market share"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-04-02T21:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/04/02/facebook-scam-targets-whole-foods-shoppers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Whole Foods, a popular health and organic grocery chain, is the subject of a new Facebook scam that phishes for users’ credit and other personal information.\nA deluge of fraudulent Facebook Pages are popping up that promise a limited number of users Whole Foods gift cards. These Pages are accruing thousands of fans and siphoning off sensitive and lucrative data.\nThe groups offering Whole Foods gift cards are in no way affiliated with the supermarket; rather, con artists are using the Pages to uncover important personal and financial information from users via a bogus credit assessment. After giving the requested information, users watch their computers crash as their identities are completely exposed.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Facebook Scam Targets Whole Foods Shoppers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T21:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/ah-yes-fbi-agent-brad-martins-with-the-global-scam-fither-in-ca-93535/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Good God! A 419 scam email from someone in grade school!\nFrom: FBI AGENT [mailto:hal-eduserv@att.net]\nSent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 7:34 AM\nSubject: FBI AGENT\nHello honest people………\nWe got your contact from our Microsoft data-base system. This is to inform you all that have lost money to Scammers in Africa, Europe and USA. We hear by inform you there is quick opportunity for you mostly on lottery. My name is FBI brad Martins I assure you am doing all I can to get your lost money back in 2 days . I know what scam means. I work with the global scam Fither in CA 93535.we have all the global scam computer to trace all Scammers Name and location. Reply back to us. We just caught a scammer now, and we found some money with him, we are returning it back to those involves. This mean your money will be refund back to you.Get back to the FBI through this email for immediate response scamtrack2010@gmail.com\n","tags":["spam","Security"],"title":"Ah yes. FBI agent Brad Martins with the “global scam Fither in CA 93535”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T19:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/google-beware-spyware-from-vietnam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Spyware/DDoS malware combo\nGoogle’s security team member Neel Mehta has blogged about yet one more spyware attack on Google users from Asia. This time forces in Vietnam apparently are trying to spy on and stifle dissent from those opposed to the expansion of bauxite mining in the country’s central highlands. The dissenters are opposed to the environmental impact, the involvement of Chinese in the venture and the displacement of people who live in the mining area. Bauxite is the ore that aluminum is extracted from.\n","tags":["Google","Security"],"title":"Google: beware spyware from Vietnam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T19:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/apple-issues-mega-patch-for-mac-os-x/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Apple has issued Security Update 2010-002 (Mac OS X v10.6.3) that fixes 100 enumerated vulnerabilities in:\n— Mac OS X 10.5\n— Mac OS X 10.6\n— Mac OS X Server 10.5\n— Mac OS X Server 10.6\nThe 400 MB+ download takes a while, so, be prepared.\nInfo here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4077\n","tags":["Apple","Updates"],"title":"Apple issues mega patch for Mac OS X"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T19:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/forbes-its-all-just-malware-now/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It seems I prompted an exploration of infection related search terms in Google Trends over on the Forbes.com Firewall blog. “Malware” is becoming a sort of catch-all term for end-users, slowly replacing the various types of Ad/Mal/Spyware classifications.\nArticle here – worth checking out the comment by Andy Hayter, Anti-Malcode Program Manager of ICSA Labs, too. Of course, I like to think I might have contributed in some small way to certain search terms going the way of the Dinosaur…\n","tags":["report","review","Search","Security"],"title":"Forbes: \"It's all just Malware now\""},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T19:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/running-executables-in-pdf-its-a-feature/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Didier Stevens, security professional and blogger, has found a “feature” in the PDF file format that makes it possible to package an executable in a PDF file which will run in Foxit PDF reader or run in Adobe Reader with a bit of social engineering.\n“With Adobe Reader, the only thing preventing execution is a warning. Disabling JavaScript will not prevent this (I don’t use JavaScript in my PoC PDF), and patching Adobe Reader isn’t possible (I’m not exploiting a vulnerability, just being creative with the PDF language specs).”\n","tags":["Adobe","Foxit","Malware","PDF","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Running executables in PDF: it’s a feature"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T12:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/ms-out-of-band-patch-today/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"MS10–018\nIf you’re using Internet Explorer versions 6 or 7 it wouldn’t be a good idea to miss this one. “Actively exploited” for drive by down loads from malicious web sites sums it up.\nThere’s something in it for IE8 as well.\nSee our post yesterday: “Microsoft out-of-band patch tomorrow”\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"MS out-of-band patch TODAY"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/itunes-9-1-released-ipad-syncing-and-ibooks-support-included/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Let the iPad hype and excitement begin: Apple’s preparation for the launch of the iPad has kicked into high gear. Today, the tech giant released version 9.1 of iTunes, its vastly popular music, app, and now book-managing software.\nThe new update doesn’t do anything like radically change the iTunes interface. Instead, it is focused on providing support for the iPad, which launches this Saturday. The big addition in this software update is iPad syncing. Thus if and when you plug that glorious iPad of yours into your computer on Saturday, it’ll sync your computer’s music, movies, books, and other media with your tablet device.\n","tags":["Apple","Updates"],"title":"iTunes 9.1 Released: iPad Syncing and iBooks Support Included"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-31T11:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/31/file-transfers-coming-to-gmail-chat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has revealed that users can now transfer files via chat in iGoogle and Orkut.\nThis is good news for web users with a preference for software-free chatting, but the better news is that Google promises to bring the same functionality to Gmail, which already supports voice, video and group chat.\nThe iGoogle and Orkut file transfers will work for photos, documents and presumably small video files. In addition, web users can exchange files with users of Google Talk — the more robust desktop version of Google’s chat client — without any hiccups.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"File Transfers Coming to Gmail Chat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T22:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/chrome-5-becomes-the-flash-browser-integrates-plug-in-with-dev-build/","readingTime":7,"section":"posts","summary":"With Google owning YouTube, the Internet’s principal delivery system for Flash-based video, it was perhaps inevitable that the company would bundle the Flash plug-in with its Chrome browser. The announcement came today from both Google and the team developing the open source Chromium component on which Chrome is based.\nThe move now officially places Google in contention with proponents of HTML 5, who had held out a glimmer of hope for a non-proprietary, non-plug-in video format for the standard’s new [VIDEO] element. In its blog post today, the Chromium team indirectly blamed the standards process for not having solved what it perceives as the problem of specifying how plug-ins should operate, and credits Mozilla — which makes Firefox — with helping to rectify that issue.\n","tags":["Adobe","Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","News","YouTube"],"title":"Chrome 5 becomes the Flash browser, integrates plug-in with dev build"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T19:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/australian-internet-censorship-row-warms-up/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"There seems to be an established procedure used by government officials who want to censor Internet traffic: begin requiring Google and ISPs to filter pornography then sneak in filtering of the politically sensitive material of your choice.\nMaybe we should give this a name: how about “porn filter law bait and switch?”\nIn China’s Green Dam fiasco last summer, the web filter that was required on new machines (before the whole idea broke down) was supposed to protect good Chinese Internet users from sex and violence. When various researchers took apart the Green Dam files, however, they found that 1.) it ripped off a lot of code from a U.S. company and 2) two thirds of the strings it was set up to filter were politically sensitive words and not sex and violence issues at all.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Australian Internet censorship row warms up"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T18:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/exes-in-word-docs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Today, our friends at Trend Micro blogged about a new attack vector using Microsoft Word documents. We saw this as well last week, and have written a detection for the dropped trojan.\nIt’s not just a “lawsuit” that’s being spammed, we also picked up another form of this attack in our honeypots over the weekend:\nWhen you open the Word document, you see a “PDF”, but it’s actually not. It’s a JPG, which links to an executable.\n","tags":["Malware","review","spam","Security"],"title":"EXEs in word docs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T18:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/improved-chat-for-igoogle-and-orkut/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Have you ever wanted to quickly send a file to a friend who’s online? Now you can share pictures, documents and other files directly with your friends while chatting in iGoogle and orkut, without having to switch to email to send the file as an attachment. File transfer works directly in the browser so you don’t need to install anything. Just start a conversation with a friend and click “Send a file…” in the “Actions” menu. After you select a file, your friend will be asked if they want to accept the transfer. You can learn more on the Google Talkabout Blog.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Improved chat for iGoogle and orkut"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T17:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/test-of-china-internet-connections-reveals-heavy-filtering/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Using a Firefox 3.0 add-on created by developers in Hong Kong, Betanews was able to briefly establish a connection with the Internet via a proxy based in mainland China. With that proxy, we were able to confirm that searches performed using Google’s Hong Kong-based page were effectively blocked.\nFirefox 3.0 reported the blockage with this message: “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading” — a message from the browser, not from an ISP. We used version 3.0.16 of Firefox (an older edition) because it is the only version compatible with China Channel, a tool made for the express purpose of testing China’s filtering ability. It has not been upgraded for version 3.6.\n","tags":["Firefox","report","review"],"title":"Test of China Internet connections reveals heavy filtering"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T17:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/back-to-basics-with-fake-av/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We’ve been seeing Fake AV programs getting more convincing for a while now. Some of the tricks employed by the guys behind these rogue programs include Windows-7-style fake scanners, in-browser “scanners”, and program features that ape other aspects of the operating system.\nYesterday, though, we came across a misleading application called AntiVirusDemoFraud that is—how to say?—possibly a little less sophisticated than some in terms of user interface design.\n","tags":["Malware","review","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Back to Basics with Fake AV"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T16:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/facebook-av/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Does a Facebook-specific antivirus application sound like a good idea? Maybe not. One of our analysts saw this particular application claiming to be an antivirus wreak havoc on his Friends list. Of course, there is no such thing.\nOnce installed on one Friend’s account, this application tags 20 Friend into a picture such as the one below:\nIf a Friend looking through the photos then clicks on the app’s (apparently randomly generated) link, they’ll see this:\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","rogue software","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Facebook AV"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T15:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/microsoft-out-of-band-patch-tomorrow/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft said today it will issue an out-of-band patch tomorrow for a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 that is being actively exploited.\n“The vulnerability exists due to an invalid pointer reference being used within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution,” Microsoft said in its Security Advisory 981374 earlier this month.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Microsoft out-of-band patch tomorrow"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T15:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/mpeg-la-wins-major-mpeg-2-settlement-from-alcatel-lucent/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Could the manufacturers of DVD players (no, not just Blu-ray, but the original DVDs) owe back royalties to Alcatel-Lucent for the use of patented technology by way of the MPEG-2 codec? The MPEG Licensing Authority had asserted that Alcatel may have structured its 2006 merger with Lucent in such a way that it could hide up to five patents in a special trust, and spring their overdue royalties on the video industry long after DVDs already began the march to obsolescence.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"MPEG LA wins major MPEG-2 settlement from Alcatel-Lucent"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-30T14:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/30/its-not-dead-yet-microsofts-out-of-band-ie6-fix-impacts-ie8/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Last month, Microsoft sent flowers to a mock funeral for Internet Explorer 6, in a show of support for the ideal that the old browser should be declared defunct worldwide. But for a few years yet, the company is still bound to support the product for those users (generally businesses) who refuse to upgrade it. That’s why new exploits that continue to target old browsers, such as IE6 and IE7, continue to get attention even a full year after the proper security fix — IE8 — has been deployed.\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"It's not dead yet: Microsoft's out-of-band IE6 fix impacts IE8"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-26T00:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/26/fake-lawsuit-notification-attack/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A few of days ago, we encountered an e-mail with a malicious RTF attachment. It was sent with a supposed lawsuit notification message.\nThe e-mail didn’t mention any company by name and took a shotgun, rather than targeted, approach.\nToday, a security blogger forwarded us (and others) his version of the e-mail:\nAt this point, it appears that the attachment has been replaced by hyperlink pointing to the Marcus Law Center.\n","tags":["Phishing","report","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Fake Lawsuit Notification Attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-26T00:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/26/child-tax-credit-is-the-new-phishing-bait/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Who wouldn’t want some tax benefits in the current economic times? Don’t phishers and scammers know that all too well! In a new phishing scheme, We found that Child Tax Credit is being used as bait to lure parents to disclose their financial data. This attack specifically tries to convince users to make claims for credit and lower their tax burden by using their children’s education expenses.\nAccording to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website [PDF], taxpayers may be able to reduce their federal income tax by up to $1,000 for each qualifying child. Making use of this information, spam email discusses the expensive education of children and quickly advises recipients to use this expense to make claims for tax credits under the numerous tax benefits provided by the IRS. They make a further appeal that as a U.S. citizen or resident, recipients should apply for their tax returns. According to the email, users can get a tax refund of $75,000 for their children’s education. To apply for a refund, users need to complete a form attached to the email message. The fraudulent email has an HTML attachment named “#1924819299.pdf.htm”.\n","tags":["advice","Malware","Phishing","review","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Child Tax Credit is the New Phishing Bait"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T23:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/google-denies-youtube-outage-speculation/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Inc., owner of YouTube, said an outage of the popular video-sharing site Thursday was technical and not caused by outside tampering.\n“YouTube is up again following a technical issue which has now been resolved,” a spokeswoman for Google said in a written statement. “We know how important YouTube is for people and apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused.”\nThe outage apparently lasted for just over an hour, from roughly 7 to 8 a.m. ET.\n","tags":["Google","News","YouTube"],"title":"Google denies YouTube outage speculation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T23:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/google-china-trade-shots/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google and the Chinese government are continuing to trade shots in the PR battle over net censorship. Earlier in the week, Google moved its Chinese search facility to Hong Kong where it claims it is legal under Chinese law to provide searches without censoring results.\nIn China:\nThe Chinese government slashed Google in an op-ed piece in China Daily. The op ed, under the name of Ding Yifan, included the assertion:\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google, China trade shots"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T23:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/firefox-ie8-and-safari-hacked-at-cansecwest/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In the Pwn2Own hacking contest at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada, security researchers and hackers quickly hacked three of the major browsers to take control of the underline operating systems.\n— A German hacker who goes by the handle “Nils” used a previously unknown vulnerability in Mozilla’s Firefox to gain control of a 64-bit Windows 7 machine.\n— Peter Vreugdenhil an independent researcher from the Netherlands, used several vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer to take control of a machine running a patched 64-bit Windows 7 implementation.\n","tags":["Apple","Browsers","Firefox","hack","Internet Explorer","News","report","Safari","Security"],"title":"Firefox, IE8 and Safari hacked at CanSecWest"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T11:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/bulgarian-city-official-loses-committee-post-because-of-farmville-addiction/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"**Computer security category of risk: human factors? **\nThe Sofia, Bulgaria, news site novinite.com is reporting that a city councilor in Bulgaria’s second largest city of Plovdiv was voted out of a city council committee because he wouldn’t stop playing Farmville during meetings.\nThe Plovdiv city hall recently got wireless Internet and city councilors got laptop computers. Two weeks ago council chairman Ilko Iliev started to get irritated by council members playing Farmville during budget hearings.\n","tags":["review"],"title":"Bulgarian city official loses committee post because of Farmville addiction"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T11:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/it-takes-only-one-nice-person/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In the security industry we often focus heavily on new technologies and shiny new software, and forget that so much of what we see is dependent on the person behind the computer.\nToday, a co-worker of mine was sent an email from someone she doesn’t know, with the following text:\n“I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my fam and I came down here to\nWales,United Kingdom for a short vacation unfortunately we were mugged\nat the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and cell\nwere stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with\nus.\n","tags":["advice","report","review","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"It takes only one ‘nice' person"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T11:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/google-in-china-saga-another-hack-move-to-hk/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"There is a risk to computer security from governments. Regulatory changes, even if they are very positive measures, can impose huge demands on an enterprise (i.e. HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, California’s law requiring notification of customers whose personal information is hacked on company sites.)\nThe “government” risk can get no bigger than the clash of Google and the government of China over the censorship issue. The world suspects that the Chinese government or its proxies were behind a campaign of hacking against Google and other major U.S companies several months ago. Google reacted to the hacks by saying in January that it would stop censoring search results for web users in China. Monday it said it would move to Hong Kong.\n","tags":["Google","hack","News","report","review","Security"],"title":"Google-in-China saga: another hack, move to HK"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T11:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/polar-opposites-in-u-s-senate-co-sponsor-cybercrime-bill/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In spite of the polarized, poisonous atmosphere in Washington, D.C., generated by President Barak Obama’s health care reform campaign, two Senators from very opposite ends of the political spectrum are co-sponsoring a bill to fight international cybercrime.\nU.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have cosponsored a bill aimed at fighting international cyber crime: the International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act.\nIf enacted into law, the bill would give the U.S. government the power to help countries that need assistance in their fight against cyber crime. It also gives the U.S. government the power to cut off financial assistance to countries that don’t crack down on net criminals.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Polar opposites in U.S. Senate co-sponsor cybercrime bill"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T10:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/google-made-in-china/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Today at CanSecWest I stopped by the Google booth and picked up a yo-yo.\nAs I was about to open the package, something struck me:\n‘Google… Made in China’\nOooops…….\n","tags":["Google","Interesting"],"title":"Google… made in China?!?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-25T10:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/25/new-social-media-pay-to-play-online-games-with-women/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"“Dirty” or “Flirty”\nOk.\nIt’s an old formula for a successful business: pay girls to have fun with you.\nThis time the schtick is getting on-line gamers to pay $8.25 (US) to play an online game with a female for 10 minutes. The women get to keep 40 percent.\nThe site is GameCrush. It just opened last night and it seems to be a success (screen shots below.)\n“GameCrush is being touted as the first social site for adult gamers with the women online able to set their gaming mood to either ‘flirt’ or ‘dirt’, IGN reports.\n_\n_\n“The men online are known as Players and the women as PlayDates and Players pay to play while PlayDates get paid to play.\n_\n_\n“Players browse PlayDate profiles — of which there are currently 1200 — view photos and even chat with girls for free.”\n_\n_\n“At the moment it only supports Xbox 360 and some games on the GameCrush website. GameCrush plans to support PlayStation 3, Wii and World of Warcraft.”\n","tags":["Gaming","review","Social Media","YouTube"],"title":"New social media? Pay to play online games with women?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T23:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/download-windows-7-mountains-theme-syue-nenggao/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We’ve previously listed many official themes for Windows 7, presented by Microsoft at Windows 7 Personalization Gallery. Here are 2 more new themes which truly depicts the prominent beauty of Taiwanese mountains ‘Syue \u0026 Nenggao’ in Taiwan.\nSyue or Hsuehshan or Snow Mountain is the second highest mountain in Taiwan with its main peak at 3,886 m (12,749 ft) above sea level.\nNenggao is a mountain in Taiwan whose southern peak has an elevation of 3,349 m. Its main peak lies at 3,261 m.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Offer","Windows 7"],"title":"Download Windows 7 Mountains Theme – Syue \u0026 Nenggao"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T21:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/the-facebook-dislike-button-likes-hotbar/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Not so long ago, examples of fake Firefox websites / downloads were in the news with the sites involved serving Hotbar installs.\nIt seems the tactic of offering up Firefox (but giving you something else entirely) is going to be around for a little while. Below is a site promoting a Firefox .xpi called “The Dislike Button”, designed to let you add an “I dislike this” note to Facebook posts:\n","tags":["Facebook","Firefox","Malware","scam","Security"],"title":"The Facebook Dislike Button Likes Hotbar"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T20:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/firefox-3-6-2-early-edition/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Mozilla Foundation has released version 3.6.2 of its Firefox browser a week early. The group had said the update would be available March 30.\nThe update fixes a widely reported vulnerability (CVE-2010-1028) that prompted Germany’s CERT to advise Web users to switch to another browser until a fix was made. (My blog post “Germany’s CERT warns against Firefox use” )\nIntevydis researcher Evgeny Legerov had found that Wide Open Font Format decoder in Firefox had an integer overflow in its font decompression mechanism. The flaw involved a memory buffer that was too small to handle a downloadable font. Legerov had found that exploiting the vulnerability could crash a victim’s browser making it possible to run arbitrary code on the system.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Browsers","Firefox","Updates","Security"],"title":"Firefox 3.6.2 early edition"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T18:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/smart-aleck-passwords/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Älypää, a popular Finnish game and quiz site, announced a database breach late last night.\nOver 127,000 account names and passwords were leaked.\nThe site has currently suspended access and doesn’t maintain any personal details but Älypää users should determine whether or not they recycle their passwords elsewhere. If so, those accounts are at risk of being hacked.\nCERT-FI guidelines can be found here.\nHere’s a list of the top 20 domains on the list:\n","tags":["advice","hack","report","Security"],"title":"Smart Aleck Passwords"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T18:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/using-windows-hosts-file-to-cut-off-the-help-line/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We found this interesting and malicious little mechanism.\nThe hosts file on a machine under investigation was modified to redirect the victim’s browser to a well known legitimate site (in this case google.com) whenever he attempted to contact a list of nearly 400 sites. The list was a “Who’s Who” of the anti-malware world – most places where someone with an infected machine would go to get help.\nThe altered hosts file he found contained many lines beginning with ‘#’ followed by gibberish. These would be seen as comments by any browser and ignored. Concealed among the commented lines are lines containing the domain name redirections. When the commented lines are stripped, we find all the listed security related websites being redirected to “209.85.129.99” which is the IP address for google.com.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Using Windows “hosts” file to cut off the help line"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T17:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/screenshots-opera-mini-5-app-for-iphone/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Recently, Opera team submitted its Opera mini app to Apple for inclusion in iTunes app store. It may take quite some time for the opera app to be approved. Till then you can see below the official screenshots of Opera Mini running on iPhone.\n","tags":["Apple","News","Opera"],"title":"Screenshots – Opera Mini 5 App for iPhone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T00:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/fix-it-tool-for-ie-0-day/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"For the current vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 which already gets actively exploited on the net, Microsoft is already testing a patch. The company is still considering whether to release the patch on the regular Patchday or out-of-band.\nMeanwhile, a “Fix-it”-solution is available. With some registry changes the affected peers factory in iepeers.dll gets disabled by a mouse click. You can download it from Microsoft’s knowledgebase.\n","tags":["0-Day","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"Fix-it-Tool for IE-0-day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T00:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/attacks-on-indian-income-tax-department-continue/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"We previously reported a phishing attack on the Indian Income Tax Department. Phishing emails boasting of tax refunds were sent to users in an attempt to entice citizens to enter their credentials on a bogus website. Recently, new attacks have been observed in which the phishing website states that taxes can be paid online. As the fiscal year in India draws to an end, more people are rushing to pay taxes before the deadline.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Attacks on Indian Income Tax Department Continue"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-23T00:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/23/fresh-exploit-served-up-with-ads/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Hi folks,\nOne of our researchers recently discovered that the Liberty exploit kit included a fairly new exploit from November 2009 … http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2009-3867 .\nThe fact that there was something fairly new in terms of exploits was interesting to start with, but then we looked at the text on the exploit page….\nLehman Brothers?! Coffee Party??!! Holy Activists, Batman!!! It’s politically motivated!!!!\nThen we looked at the stats page (all these toolkits come with a sophisticated admin page), and saw that the top referrer was ad.yieldmanager.com! Holy Advertisers, Batman! Activists who know how to use exploit kits, _and_ the ad network!!!\n","tags":["Adobe","Internet Explorer","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Fresh exploit served up with ads"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T23:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/icelandic-volcano-erupts-fake-antivirus-spews-forth/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Yesterday there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland, near the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier, that has led the Icelandic authorities to declare a state of emergency in southern Iceland. People living nearby have been evacuated in case of glacial melt water flooding and the airspace near the now active volcano is effectively closed off. As you have probably already guessed, any event which commands a high level of public interest will be pounced on quickly by the makers of fake antivirus software in order to make a quick buck. This incident is no exception.\n","tags":["Apple","Malware","Phishing","review","rogue software","Security"],"title":"Icelandic Volcano Erupts, Fake Antivirus Spews Forth"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T23:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/a-fishy-defacement/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Generally speaking, most website defacements I see tend to look the same with political activist Y decrying political activist Z, or leet hax0rs posting up a mile-long shoutout list to their crew.\nThis one is, er, a little different – a defacement of what appears to have been a site involved in fish logistics and / or preservation, fish2see(dot)dk. I can only imagine the horror on the face of the site admin who woke up this morning to be confronted by this:\n","tags":["Phishing","report","Security"],"title":"A Fishy Defacement"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T23:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/phishers-cast-their-nets-at-neopets-users/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"If you have children that play Neopets, you might want to warn them about this website or insert it into a blocklist of your choosing. The site is Neopoints(dot)tk, and promises lots of free Neopoints related items, with the help of a cute mascot called “Tuma the Draik”. I think there was a Norwegian prog rock group from the 70s called that, but I could be wrong.\nOf particular note here is the fact the site claims to offer “free magic paintbrushes”. These items are incredibly rare in Neopets land, and an excited child could easily wander into this particular trap as a result.\n","tags":["Phishing","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Phishers cast their nets at Neopets Users"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T23:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/germanys-cert-warns-against-firefox-use/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"BürgerCERT, Germany’s government information security organization, is recommending that Web users NOT use the Firefox browser until Mozilla fixes a vulnerability in it March 30. No malicious use has been found yet, however a researcher posted proof-of concept code for exploiting the previously unknown vulnerability. A malicious operator could use the vulnerability to run arbitrary code. Mozilla is expected to post version Firefox 3.6.2 to fix the problem.\nIn January, the governments of France and Germany urged users to stop using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser until the company fixed the vulnerability that was blamed, at least in part, for the attacks from China on Google and more than two dozen other companies.\n","tags":["Firefox","News","Vulnerability"],"title":"Germany’s CERT warns against Firefox use"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T23:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/google-quits-censoring-search-in-china/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":" Google’s decision to stop censoring search results in China may lead the Chinese government to block access to its sites.\nGoogle on Monday announced it has stopped censoring search results in China.\nThe announcement came amid speculation that the search giant would pull out of China entirely and sets up a showdown with the Communist leadership there.\nIn a 3:03 p.m. ET post on its official blog, Google said it stopped running the censored Google.cn service on Monday and was routing its Chinese users to an uncensored version of Google based in Hong Kong.\n","tags":["Google","News","YouTube"],"title":"Google quits censoring search in China"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T22:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/google-posts-page-monitoring-chinese-censorship/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google has put up a page that shows what Web services are currently being blocked by the Chinese government.\nhttp://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google posts page monitoring Chinese censorship"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T22:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/google-cn-is-dead-now/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google.cn is now redirecting to google.com.hk [ Hong Kong google servers ] – this has happened after the cyber attack on google china servers in december. right now if you try to access the google china web, news and image search are being redirected to google.com.hk\nBelow is short snippet of the update about this on google official blog\nSo earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google.cn is Dead Now"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T19:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/the-browser-choice-reloaded/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A little more than a week ago Microsoft started delivering a new Browser Choice for Windows to be compliant to the European Union law. There are plenty of web browsers to choose from, and my colleague Sorin Mustaca recommended Firefox. Usually a good choice, but currently users should be cautious about which browser they choose:\nOpera just released version 10.51 of their web browser. According to the changelog, it fixes a vulnerability which could lead to execution of injected code. Users of opera 10.50 should update as soon as possible.\n","tags":["Browsers","Firefox","Google Chrome","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Opera","Updates"],"title":"The Browser Choice Reloaded"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T16:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/merogo-sms-worm/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" We’re investigating a series of SMS Worms, found in the wild in China. Known as Trojan:SymbOS/MerogoSMS, these worms try to spread on Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition devices. Symbian continues to be by far the most common smartphone operating system in the world.\nThese worms spread by sending text messages to other phones. These text messages contain variable messages (in Chinese), and a link to a website. If the link is followed, user is prompted to install an application – infecting the phone and restarting the SMS spreading.\n","tags":["Malware","Mobile","spam","Security"],"title":"Merogo SMS worm"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T15:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/google-search-reveals-3-million-pages-link-to-rogue-avs/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Do you know what the latest version of Adobe’s Flash Player is? If you don’t, you may very well fall for this:\nFlash Player 11?\nThere are more than 3 million pages linking to this alleged version 11:\nMost pages are from unsanitized forums, but there is even a Google Ad for it! Ooooops….\nThe screen below depicts the social engineering trick: What appears to be an X-rated video with a Windows Media Player logo (that is odd!).\n","tags":["Google","Malware","review","scam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Google search reveals 3 million pages link to rogue AVs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T15:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/imf-money-making-scam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I have seen a lot of these lately. This one currently doing the rounds tries to dupe the reader into thinking that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants to use their accounts to transfer money meant for charity.\nIn the email. the IMF (supposedly) wants to transfer $10 Million into the reader’s account using NatWest Bank. The contact details within the Bank are given as follows:\nName: Mr. Donald Miller (Co-founder)\nOffice Address: 11 El Shams Bldgs., 8th District Nasr City\nE-mail: Bernisecharityfoundationimf ‘at’ gmail.com\nTel: (+44) 7031-939-750\nFax: (+44) 7011830323\n","tags":["alert","AOL","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"IMF money-making scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T15:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/become-a-fan-of-omid-on-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" You are invited to become a fan of Omid’s Network on Facebook.\nThose of you who already have a Facebook page; all you have to do is become a fan to view the Omid fan page in its entirety. But to participate fully you must join Facebook. If you do not already have a Facebook profile you will still be able to view photos and basic information (but c’mon, you know you have wanted to jump on the Facebook bandwagon – here’s a good reason why.)\n","tags":["Facebook","Social Media","This Blog Update"],"title":"become a fan of Omid on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T13:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/bots-bots-and-again-bots/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Today we are going to take a closer look at bots and botnets. On the black market, selling bots and botnets is quite profitable, which makes creating them a popular activity for criminals. It helps that bot sources and creation kits are available on the Internet, allowing even script kiddies to create their own botnets. Another reason bots get created is that some people who get bored in their daily lives tend to do things that in their opinion might earn them respect or admiration in front of their peers or in various Internet chat rooms.\n","tags":["Malware","review","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Bots, bots, and again bots"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T13:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/googles-pacific-submarine-cable-unity-nearly-complete/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"— 7.68 Terabits/s for growing Asian market\n— $300 million cost (from consortium of six companies)\n— 10,000 km length (Chikura in Japan to Los Angeles)\n— Increases capacity across Pacific by 20 percent\n— Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology (960Gbps per fibre-optic pair with a maximum of eight fiber pairs)\n— construction time: two years\nStory here.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google’s Pacific submarine cable \"Unity\" nearly complete"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T13:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/20-undocumented-holes-in-os-x/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Charlie Miller, Principal Analyst at Baltimore, Md.-based security firm ISE, has made news in the last two days saying that he found 20 perviously-unknown security vulnerabilities in Apple’s OS X operating system. News stories seem to anticipate that he will reveal them at the CanSec West conference next week in his talk “Babysitting an Army of Monkeys: An Analysis of Fuzzing 4 Products with 5 Lines of Python.”\nHowever, Miller tweeted: “To be clear, I’m not revealing 20 apple bugs at #cansec, I’m revealing how I found 20 apple bugs.”\n","tags":["Apple","Vulnerability"],"title":"20 undocumented holes in OS X?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T12:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/phishing-increased-62-percent-in-09/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The DarkReading site is carrying a story about brand-protection firm MarkMonitor’s finding that phishing increased 62 percent in 2009 with 565,502 attacks in the year. MarkMonitor is based in San Francisco.\nOther conclusions in MarkMonitor’s 2009 BrandJacking Index report:\nThe huge increase can probably be attributed to the use of botnets and the large amount of personal information that can be scraped from social network sources. 2009 saw the all-time high average of 600 phishing attacks per organization only 33 percent of victims were first-time targets. Social networks suffered 11,240 attacks – two percent of the year’s total. The U.S. hosted 44.7 percent of phishing attacks, up from 36.5 in 2008. DarkReading story Here.\n","tags":["News","Phishing","report","Security"],"title":"Phishing increased 62 percent in '09"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T12:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/index-of-images-a-hiding-place-for-malware/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"The underlying structure of a typical website is made up of different folders and sub-folders, much like the ones that are on your computer. A webmaster (is this term still used often lol?) transfers files back and forth using an FTP client in order to update the website.\nIn most cases, specific folders are created for a specific reason. For instance the ‘pub’ folder is usually a public repository that allows anybody access to.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","review","Security"],"title":"Index of /images: a hiding place for malware?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T10:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/please-give-me-your-credit-card/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I won’t abuse it, I promise…. cross my heart… spit into the wind… etc.\nHi folks,\nYesterday, I received this SPIM (Instant message spam) …\nusnews3.com sounds kind of official, doesn’t it? and the page looks impressive…\nThere are lots of links on the page, but unfortunately, a mouse-over of each link reveals that they all go to the same place…\nThat’s not a good sign for a legitimate webpage. Moreover, a whois shows that it was registered just on 7th December 2009, and that the ownership is hidden behind a privacy protector service.\n","tags":["Instant Messaging","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Please give me your credit card"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T09:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/screenshots-of-the-latest-twitter-phishing-attack/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Today there’s a phishing run underway in Twitter, using Direct Messages (“DMs”). These are private one-to-one Tweets inside Twitter.\nThe messages look like these:\nIf you follow the link, you end up to a fake Twitter page:\nIf you mistakenly give out your credentials, the attackers will start sending similar Direct Messages to your contacts, posing as you.\nThe ultimate goal of the attackers is to gain access to a large amount of valid Twitter accounts, then use these account to post Tweets with URLs pointing to malicious websites which will take over users computers when clicked.\n","tags":["MySpace","Phishing","scam","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Screenshots of the latest Twitter phishing attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-22T09:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/22/another-fakeav-for-windows-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"With Windows 7 becoming increasingly popular, more and more software companies have begun to upgrade their interface for the latest Microsoft operating system. Manufacturers seem to understand the need for a beautiful user interface for their products. However, not all software behaves as good as it looks.\nToday, I saw a Fake Antivirus program with a newer, more jazzed up interface, which we detect as Troj/FakeAle-RK.\nThis malware specifically targets users of Windows 7 and appears in the form of a pop-up dialogue box, which attempts to tell you that your Windows 7 PC has many serious threats. When a user clicks “Remove all Threats immediately”, another pop-up will be generated asking them to download a file called win_protection_update.exe.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Another FakeAV, for Windows 7!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T11:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/the-dangers-of-freebies/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The internet is rife with free tools from anything to everything (almost) – from free HTML web editors to free applications to free games and so on.\nWe’ve been in this situation before. Sometimes out of curiosity or “affluenza” (also known as “I-GOTTA-HAVE-IT-NOW-NO-MATTER-WHAT”), we are tempted to install some of these free tools and applications from the web.\nThe unfortunate problem with freebies is that unless you know the source of where you download the tools from and whether the software author who created the application is credible, you are literally at the whim and mercy of the author should you choose to download and install the application.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"The Dangers Of Freebies"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T10:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/google-code-turns-five/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"At age five most kids can hop, skip and tie their shoes without help. Google Code turns five this week, and while they’re still working on the shoelaces thing, they’ve grown from a simple site for hosting a couple of APIs into a destination for developers to prototype their ideas in a Code Playground, host all kinds of open source projects and find out about our growing family of APIs and products like App Engine, Google Web Toolkit and Android.\n","tags":["Android","Google","News"],"title":"Google Code turns five"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T10:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/fraud-alert-tax-time-in-the-usa/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” These days we can add to the certainty of those two inevitable events with the addition of the annual scams that accompany tax time.\nFor those of you who haven’t heard of this type of scam, it’s basically another way to separate a man from his money, or if you want to look at the bigger picture, a way to defraud the federal government. Either way, your wallet suffers. The financial website money-zine has a good article on the latest tax scams you may encounter on the Web.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Fraud alert: Tax time in the USA"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T10:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/twitter-launches-shortening-service/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Del Harvey, Director of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, announced on Twitter’s blog that the micro-blogging service has begun using its own shortening service to stop malicious operators from sending tweets with links to their dodgy sites disguised through shortening.\nHe wrote: “By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”\n","tags":["News","Twitter","Updates"],"title":"Twitter launches shortening service"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T10:21:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/can-spam-get-worse/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Or is it at the saturation point?\nThe SANS Institute (acronym = SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) web site carried a blog piece that gives a good snapshot of the horrible ongoing plague of spam email that IT folks all over the globe must deal with. The writer, Deborah Hale, said the ISP in the Midwest where she works received almost 20 million pieces of email for more than 9,000 accounts since the beginning of March. Only 713,222 (3.6 percent) were NOT spam.\n","tags":["report","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Can spam get worse?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T10:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/looking-for-a-good-time-new-scheduling-tool-in-calendar/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Scheduling meetings is tough, but rescheduling is even harder. We all know how frustrating it can be to try to find just the right time that accommodates everyone’s availability and preferred working hours. Throw in different time zones and conference rooms and it goes from painful to excruciating. We’d rather schedule dental appointments.\nOn the Google Calendar team, they’ve noticed that when people talk about scheduling they say things like “I’m trying to find a time” or “let’s search for a new date.” They wondered what would happen if they treated calendaring more like a search problem. Just as Google search applies ranking algorithms to return the most relevant results from the web, they hoped they could rank meeting times based on criteria important to the person scheduling the meeting.\n","tags":["Google","News","Offer"],"title":"Looking for a good time? New scheduling tool in Calendar"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T10:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/blank-plastic/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We regularly learn of cases where criminals have gained access to credit card numbers via keyloggers, skimmers or online hacks.\nOnce they have the credit card numbers, they basically have three ways to turn them into cash:\nSell them Make fraudulent purchases on them Create real-world cards out of them To create real-world cards, you need blank cards to start with. These are known in the underground as “blank plastic“.\n","tags":["Interesting","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Blank Plastic"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T09:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/download-google-buzz-widget-for-android-phones/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"You can now access Google Buzz from your Android mobiles easily using the official Google Buzz widget, that lets you post text and photos with a single tap.\nThe widget lets you choose to tag your post with the location or place from which it was posted. To save time, your posts will upload in the background.\nIt is initially available in English for Android phones running v1.6 and later. To download it, search for ‘Google Buzz’ in the Android Market. Once installed, you can add it to home screen: tap “Menu” while on the home screen and select “Add \u003e Widgets \u003e Google Buzz”.\n","tags":["Android","Google","Mobile","News"],"title":"Download Google Buzz widget for Android phones"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-19T09:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/19/windows-xp-mode-now-accessible-to-more-pcs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Microsoft is announcing an update to Windows XP Mode today that will make it a more accessible to PCs in small and midsize businesses who want to migrate to Windows 7 Professional but have applications that still require Windows XP. Windows XP Mode will no longer require hardware virtualization technology to run. This change makes it extremely easy for businesses to use Windows XP Mode to address any application incompatibility roadblocks they might have in migrating to Windows 7. Windows XP Mode will of course continue to use hardware virtualization technology such as Intel VT (Intel Virtualization Technology) or AMD-V if available. You can find more information and download the update which will go live later today here.\n","tags":["AMD","Microsoft","News","Updates"],"title":"Windows XP Mode now accessible to more PCs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-18T11:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/18/irogue/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Are Mac OS X rogues an emerging threat?\nFor many years discussions of the potential for malware on Macs have ended with the conclusion: “there isn’t much yet, but as soon as Mac gets a big market share the dark side is going to start writing the code.” There are indications that the bad guys are working on it.\nThere have been some blog posts suggesting that the dark side is working hard to create a Mac OS X compatible rogue. SCMagazine is carrying a piece quoting a spokesman for researchers at Intego. Apparently Intego researchers got proof-of-concept code for an OS X rogue from underground sources and determined that it didn’t quite work. However, they concluded that some sophisticated coding was going on:\n","tags":["Apple","Malware","report","review","rogue software","Security"],"title":"iRogue?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-18T09:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/18/more-reader-features-in-your-pocket/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The more eagle-eyed Reader users have noticed a few tweaks being made to Reader’s mobile interface over the past few days:\nGoogle has brought over a few more features from the desktop version of Reader: magic ranking and search. Both can be found in the option drop-down menu. For better consistency with the desktop version, Google has made the titles of items be links to the original page The top of each item now has “collapse” and “next item” links. This way there’s always a consistent space for your thumb to hit so you can advance to the next item. Since Google know the best mobile content is short and sweet, they’re going to leave you with that. Feel free to get in touch with them on Twitter or on their help group with feedback on these changes.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"More Reader features in your pocket"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-18T09:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/18/google-improves-maps-for-android-rolls-in-bonus-features/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google has rolled out a significant update to the Google Maps application for Android 1.6+ devices, which includes a new search results page, support for multiple accounts, a new Latitude homescreen widget, and a new Maps live wallpaper for 2.1 devices.\nPreviously, when you performed a search in Maps, you would have to choose a result from a list of markers on the map. When you clicked the marker, it would open a page with three tabs: Address, Details, and Reviews. Under the Address tab, there were options to Show the result on the map, get directions to it, call it, look at it in Street View, or add it as a contact. The other two tabs contain exactly what you’d expect, details and reviews. If you wanted to pick a different listing, you’d have to go back to the map view and pick a different marker.\n","tags":["Android","Google","Mobile","News"],"title":"Google improves Maps for Android, rolls in bonus features"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-18T08:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/18/facebook-suffers-password-reset-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Today has been quite a busy day for scammers. We have been tracking a global scam/spam run that targets Facebook users. The lure used in the run is a familiar one:\nFacebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support.\nThe email looks like the following [Just it won’t notify you it’s Spam, it’s my own Software 😉 ]:\nThe activity on this particular scam run has been global from the beginning. The malware in the attachment is pretty much what one would expect: downloaders, password-stealing Trojan, fake-AV, or bot stuff, depending on which one you got. Check out the Artemis map of this malware:\n","tags":["Facebook","scam","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Suffers ‘Password Reset’ Scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T22:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/chilean-earthquake-spawns-malware/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Most of us are familiar with how high profile news events are used for malware distribution. We’ve seen it many times such as with Tiger Woods’ scandal and the earthquake in Haiti. Now the recent earthquake in Chile is used to prey upon unsuspecting folks interested in what’s going on with the post-quake and tsunami. This shows we should really be careful in our choices of where we go to get information. Try any related search term or phrase related to “Chile Earthquake”, “Tsunami”, etc. I’ve done so and will walk us through a few examples of risky to malicious content that my search turned up. This type of malware distribution tends to target the broadest audience possible, so I entered the search term “Chile” and then let Google auto-complete my search to “Chile quake 2010 tsunami” to load what is a popular search phrase. Almost immediately, among some recognizable news site results are random blog posts touting words like “download” or “.exe”. We should be suspicious of these.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Apple","Bing","Malware","Phishing","scam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Chilean Earthquake Spawns Malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T21:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/facebook-users-suffer-from-fram/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"About a year or so ago one of the “McMarketeers” decided it would be fun to run a campaign against “fram”–spam that friends send you. As you might guess, we in the Labs have no friends, so it was no problem for us to ridicule the idea.\nHowever, around the coffee machine the other day I got involved in a quick discussion about spam on Facebook. A long-term social networker genuinely thought that Facebook spam did not exist and that all the noise was from Facebookers playing games or using annoying apps. So I offered to write up an example.\n","tags":["Facebook","scam","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Facebook Users Suffer From ‘Fram’"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T18:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/big-safari-fix/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Apple yesterday released a huge Safari update that fixes 16 vulnerabilities – six for Windows versions and ten for Mac OS X and Windows. The update, Safari 4.0.5, makes fixes in Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Windows versions.\nThis is probably pretty significant. In November, the TheInquirer.net of the UK carried a piece about browser vulnerabilities that rated Firefox and Safari as the ones with the most vulnerabilities:\n","tags":["Apple","Browsers","Firefox","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Big Safari fix"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T14:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/twitter-starts-direct-message-phishing-filtering/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Del Harvey who leads Twitter’s Trust and Safety team blogged yesterday that the social networking/micro-blogging service has begun filtering all links in Twitter Direct Messages to stop phishing:\n“Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.”\n","tags":["News","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter starts Direct Message phishing filtering"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T14:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/consoles-for-old-games-come-with-new-malcode/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Be on the lookout for websites offering up “free applications” which come with a nasty sting in the tail. Here’s a typical example: Appzkeygen(dot)com\nIf you like videogame consoles, you may be a fan of emulators (programs that ape long dead consoles, allowing you to play old games on your PC – we’ll avoid the murky legal minefield that comes with this practice and instead focus on the malware).\nBelow is a Playstation 2 emulator – no really, it is. Would they lie to you?\n","tags":["Hijack","Malware","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Consoles for old games come with new malcode"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T14:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/internet-explorer-0-day-targeted-in-spam-runs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hot on the heels of the Patch Tuesday announcements yesterday, came the announcement of a new zero-day in Internet Explorer (CVE-2010-0806).\nWhilst checking through some URLs supposedly serving up malicious code to exploit this vulnerability, I noticed a link to some spam runs from earlier in the week. On March 8th SophosLabs saw spam messages attempting to trick the recipient into visiting rogue web pages. Messages used at least two social engineering tricks to lure victims into clicking the malicious link.\n","tags":["0-Day","Internet Explorer","Patch Tuesday","Phishing","spam","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Internet Explorer 0-day targeted in spam runs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T13:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/twitter-spam-getting-slim-with-slim-urls/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A while ago I was writing about twitter spam and I was trying to make a brief definition of this kind of spam: It follows a lot of users , has 1 post and is followed only by a few persons. Well, this changed now, because the theme became much more interesting for the people on Twitter: how to loose weight. Ironically, the URLs on Twitter also make a diet – they always get “compressed” using link shortener services.\n","tags":["Social Media","spam","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter Spam: Getting slim with slim URLs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T13:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/exploit-code-for-ie-0-day-vulnerability/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Exploit code for the the zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer has been added to the Metasploit framework. According to an email HD Moore wrote to ZDNet’s Ryan Naraine, the exploit works quite reliable – successful 50% of the times on Windows XP with SP2 and SP3 with IE7 and deactivated Data Execution Prevention (DEP).\nThe security hole got reported yesterday on Microsoft’s March 2010 Patch Tuesday. Drive-by-Download-Exploits are likely to appear now as the Metasploit framework is open source and the exploit can now be abused even by script kiddies. Time to change the default browser – Microsoft just released a new browser choice screen which allows for exactly that!\n","tags":["0-Day","advice","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Exploit Code for IE 0-day vulnerability"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T12:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/finding-awesome-stuff-online-with-google-reader-play/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I use Google Reader a lot — not only to stay on top of the news, but also to find interesting blog posts and articles. I’m always telling my friends about Google Reader, and while some of them love it, others don’t want to take the time to set it up. For those of you who fall into this second category, Google is announcing Google Reader Play, a new product that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone. Reader Play is a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web, customized to the topics you’re interested in, with no setup required.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Finding awesome stuff online with Google Reader Play"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T12:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/malicious-web-attack-using-executable-with-facebook-com-in-name/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"As we were working through URLs identified as suspicious due to our GTI technology, one of the URLs that presented itself was an average “.com” site that loaded a php. As we processed this – it was interesting to see that this php actually reached out to download a file that ended with the string facebook.com.exe — as this “.com” site was very social-network friendly – it would be easy to see how an average user, without web protection in place, would not even realize what was going on.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Malicious Web Attack Using Executable With facebook.com in Name"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T11:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/many-zeus-botnet-cc-servers-taken-down/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Swiss security blog Abuse.ch has reported that the worst Zeus botnet hosting ISP was taken off line yesterday, cutting the botnet’s number of servers from 249 to 181 – including the six worse ones.\nAbuse.ch wrote: “As you can see in the chart above, on March 9th 2010, the number of active ZeuS C\u0026C servers dropped from 249 to 181! The first thing I thought was: There has to be some problem with the ZeuS Tracker cron script. I checked the script – everything looked ok. So the massive drop of ZeuS C\u0026C server is fact. I noticed that six of the worst ZeuS hosting ISP suddenly disappeared from the ZeuS Tracker.\n_\n_\n“I verified the subnets of the affected ISP and came to the conclusion that Troyak-as (AS50215), the upstream provider for the six worst ZeuS hosting ISPs, was cut from the internet on 2010-03-09. ”\n","tags":["Malware","News","Security"],"title":"Many Zeus botnet C\u0026C servers taken down"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T11:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/you-dont-want-to-go-looking-for-corey-haim-videos/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Hollywood celebrity Corey Haim has died in typical tabloid fashion: “under investigation.” And we all know that celebrity death equals Internet scams by the boatload.\nThere are a number of spam runs currently circulating on video sharing sites such as Youtube, ready to catch out the curious and the unwary. Shall we take a look?\n“Suicide or killed! Watch Corey Haim first found dead”\nClassy. Visiting mycelebzone(dot)com will pop open a Hotbar prompt, which you need to install to “see the content”:\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","scam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"You don't want to go looking for Corey Haim videos"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T11:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/how-safe-is-cloud-computing/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"This is an article taken from CNN and I don’t agree or disagree it.\nWhat security concerns are hidden in the murk of cloud computing?\n(CNN) — Stormy weather could be on the horizon for cloud computing as security experts warn not enough is being done to make sure one of the hottest IT trends is safe.\n“There are many motivations for why an individual or a company would want to engage in cloud computing,” said Thomas Parenty, managing director of Parenty Consulting, a Hong Kong-based information security consulting firm. “None of them have to do with enhanced security.”\n","tags":["Cloud Computing","review","Yahoo"],"title":"How safe is cloud computing?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-12T11:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/12/phishing-craigslist-but-is-it-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Malware has traditionally been easy to spot and classify, mainly because it was created to serve a specific nefarious purpose and nothing else. In the ongoing arms race between malware authors and the security industry, stealth and other ‘in plain sight‘ technologies are emerging as clear favorites.\nCase in point is a recent Craigslist phish, disguised as a phone update – nothing new about malware pretending to be something it isn’t, but that’s not where the story ends. Examining the executable shows that it is nothing more than a RAR self-extracting (SFX) archive – and thus not inherently malicious.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","review","Security"],"title":"Phishing craigslist – but is it malware?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-11T12:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/11/stars-make-search-more-personal/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"We’ve long believed that personalization makes search more relevant and fun. For nearly five years, Google has been tailoring results with personalized search. They’re announcing a new feature in search that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content — stars.\nWith stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant. That means if you star the official websites for your favorite football teams, you might see those results right at the top of your next search for [nfl]. Here’s what the new “Starred results” feature looks like:\n","tags":["Google","News","Updates"],"title":"Stars make search more personal"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-11T12:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/11/wot-has-a-bookmarklet-for-opera-and-safari/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Opera and Safari don’t currently allow browser extensions in the same way as Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome does, and therefore, providing WOT for these environments is not feasible. However, as a response to requests from our users, we have created a WOT bookmarklet that brings at least some of the functionality to the users of these two popular browsers.\nIf you are using Safari or Opera, you can add the WOT bookmarklet to your browser simply by dragging this link to your bookmarks: WOT Rating.\n","tags":["Firefox","Google Chrome","News","Offer"],"title":"WOT has a bookmarklet for Opera and Safari"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-10T10:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/10/microsoft-patch-tuesday-march-2010/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Hello and welcome to this month’s blog on the Microsoft patch releases. This is a fairly quiet month—the vendor is releasing two bulletins covering a total of eight vulnerabilities.\nAll of the issues are rated “Important” this month: seven affecting Office/Excel and one affecting Movie Maker and Producer. All of the issues are file-based remote code-execution vulnerabilities in the context of the currently logged-in user.\nMicrosoft also released a security advisory (981374) today regarding a publicly disclosed vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Limited, targeted attacks exploiting this issue have been detected in the wild.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Microsoft Patch Tuesday – March 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-08T23:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/08/vodafone-distributes-mariposa-botnet/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Here is yet another example of a company distributing malware to its userbase. Unfortunately it probably won’t be the last.\nToday one of our colleagues received a brand new Vodafone HTC Magic with Google’s Android OS. “Neat” she said. Vodafone distributes this phone to its userbase in some European countries and it seems affordable as you can get it for 0€ or 1€ under certain conditions.\nThe interesting thing is that when she plugged the phone to her PC via USB her Antivirus went off, detecting both an autorun.inf and autorun.exe as malicious. A quick look into the phone quickly revealed it was infected and spreading the infection to any and all PCs that the phone would be plugged into.\n","tags":["Android","Malware","Mobile","report","review","Security"],"title":"Vodafone distributes Mariposa botnet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-08T23:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/08/energizer-usb-charger-infected-with-trojan/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Hmmm. A new vector for malware: USB battery chargers. Wonderful.\nThe U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is warning that Energizer DUO USB battery chargers have been found infected with a Trojan that loads backdoor malware on a victim PC along with its battery monitoring software.\nThe charger copies a .dll file named UsbCharger.dll in the application’s directory and another named Arucer.dll in the Windows system32 directory. USBCharger sets a registry entry to autoexecute Arucer.dll when Windows starts.\n","tags":["Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Energizer USB charger infected with Trojan"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-08T22:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/08/the-browser-choice/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A Windows Update is available to users who are located in member countries of the European Union allowing for choosing a different standard browser for the system. The update is available for download through Windows Update.\nThe Update creates a shortcut on your desktop. This shortcut leads to a Web page in which it is possible to select which Web browser to install. Additionally, the first time the users logs in to the computer after installing the update, Windows Internet Explorer starts automatically and displays the Browser Choice Web page.\n","tags":["advice","Firefox","Google Chrome","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"The Browser Choice"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-08T22:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/08/cute-and-malicious/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There’s an angelically tinged infection doing the rounds at the moment that has more than a whiff of sulphur about it.\nWe can’t say for definite, but it looks like the point of this little angel is to turn your PC into a file storage area for an IRC channel since it dumps you into #music IRC channels and makes sure you can accept various media files.\nOur tale begins with an Email, claiming you have a “funny picture from Facebook friends” waiting for you at Oast(dot)com:\n","tags":["Facebook","Hijack","Malware","review","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Cute (and malicious)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-07T01:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/07/blogger-com-not/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Cybercriminals are attacking bloggers who use Google’s Blogger.com. We have received emails intended for bloggers to update their account. Here’s the snapshot email of the email we have received:\nThe email contains link that will redirect to fake login page of the “Blogger.com”. As seen from the highlighted link, it has a root domain “*.erdca.kr” which is differ from the authentic root domain of blogger.com. The fake login page which is known as phishing site appears to be like this:\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Blogger.com – -not!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-07T00:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/07/googles-app-store-for-business-to-launch-next-week/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google is set to launch an app store for business next week, Mashable has learned from sources close to the company. It will be focused around creating software for Google Apps and could launch as soon as Tuesday.\nEarly last month, news leaked about Google working on its own app store that would give third-party apps and developers the opportunity to sell their software to customers of Google Apps. This included options for increasing security, word-processing and information porting/syncing.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google’s App Store for Business to Launch Next Week"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-07T00:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/07/steer-clear-of-fake-fbi-fingerprint-scanner/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Sources on a number of forums tell me that a certain application is going to be released into the wild in a few days, promoted heavily via sites such as Youtube to attract as many potential victims as possible. I thought it might be beneficial to get a head start on the bad guys and get word out before they hit their big green “Go” switch.\nWhat is it? I believe the following screenshot can answer that question:\n","tags":["Malware","review","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Steer clear of fake FBI fingerprint scanner"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T23:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/wiseguys-botnet-first-in-line-for-concert-sports-tickets/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"We frequently read stories about spammers who can circumvent CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) authentication. Using bot-infected machines, they can create a vast number of random e-mail accounts for spamming purposes.\nThis week, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, revealed the latest use of a botnet-like network with a CAPTCHA breaker. In this case, the computers overseen by the defendants were used to buy seats for high-profile concerts and sports events from ticket sellers’ websites. The defendents later allegedly resold the tickets on Internet at much higher prices.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","report","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Wiseguys Botnet First in Line for Concert, Sports Tickets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T23:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/all-browsers-are-not-created-equal/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"My friends often ask me about steps they can take to keep their systems at work and home free from malware. Apart from the usual recommendation to use alternative, less targeted and therefore slightly more secure operating system like Linux or OSX (OpenBSD would also be an interesting alternative) I used to mention that a change of the web browser would also be very helpful.\nInternet Explorer is still the most commonly used browser with a little above 60% market share, but its market share is steadily in decline in the last couple of years. I am fairly sure that one of the main reasons people move to Firefox or Chrome is perceived lack of security. Internet Explorer is the most common target for malware and various exploit packs although the latest versions have proved to be much more resilient to various attacks. With most of the users finally making the switch away from IE6 we hope that the exploits will be even less successful in the future. This of course means that attackers are changing their focus to other products like Adobe Reader of Flash, the most commonly used internet applications after browsers. Exploiting Flash or Adobe Reader allows the attacker to abstract the browser version and often the browser itself. Adobe’s attitude to security also does not help.\n","tags":["Firefox","report","review"],"title":"All browsers are (not) created equal"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T23:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/seo-blogger-victim-of-malicious-seo-attack/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"On Friday evening I was talking to a North American customer who had been fighting with infections caused by SEO poisoning. They mentioned a particular search term that could generate new samples of FakeAVs. The funny thing was that the website hacked by the SEO poisoner was a blog of someone trying to promote legitimate business use of SEO technologies..\nIf you click on any of the links returned by the search you would be redirected to an Indian site containing this image:\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"SEO blogger victim of malicious SEO attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T23:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/kuwait-saudi-and-priv8-activex-exploit/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We all know Brazilian hackers have mastered the art of creating banking trojans. The Chinese are very fond of password stealers targeting online games. The bad guys do have preferences for what type of malware they are creating based on their geolocation.\nWell, I found this exploit source code from a domain named kuwait{removed}.com\nThe exploit downloads a file named unek.exe, very well known to be an IRC bot.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Kuwait, Saudi… and PrIv8 ActiveX ExploiT"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T23:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/desperate-phishing-attempt/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Somebody is trying to pose as F-Secure. If you see an email like the one below, just ignore it:\nBefore you ask: No, we’ve never heard of “F-Secure HTK4S anti-virus” either.\n","tags":["alert","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Desperate phishing attempt"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T13:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/facebook-twitter-use-skyrockets-on-cell-phones/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"New comScore data shows that Facebook and Twitter use has skyrocketed on mobile devices over the past year, and that on-the-go MySpace use is now on the decline, according to MediaPost.\nHere are the numbers: Facebook now sees 25.1 million mobile users as of January 2010, which is more than double the January 2009 total. Twitter grew to 4.7 million during the same period, which is four times the year-ago total, the report said.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Facebook, Twitter Use Skyrockets on Cell Phones"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-06T12:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/06/download-life-theme-pack-for-windows-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"After the Spring theme pack Microsoft has released a beautiful Life theme. It consists of five beautiful Discovery channel wallpapers based on wild life and nature.\nThis is a official theme and can be applied just by double clicking on the theme file.\nDownload: Life Theme pack for Windows 7\n","tags":["Microsoft"],"title":"Download Life Theme Pack for Windows 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T19:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/viruses-and-digital-signatures/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Recently, We received some malicious files which appeared to be signed by “Adobe Systems Incorporated”. On closer inspection, however, it was seen that the signature was just a ruse used by the malware author to give an air of legitimacy to the files. Virus writers are getting smarter and going that extra mile to digitally sign their files. Using this technique the malware authors could, for example, penetrate an environment where only signed files are allowed but the authenticity of the signature is not checked.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Viruses and Digital Signatures"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T19:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/the-morphing-pdf/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Just when we thought SEO using Flash was as interesting as SEO poisoning can get, it seems it’s getting even sneakier…\nImagine a PDF file posted by someone evil online. Of course, Google being Google, the file is recognized as a PDF.\nAnd when we open it, it really is a PDF. No evil codes inside, just a good old vanilla PDF file.\nThree hours later… Google still says the file is a PDF. Brod (one of our geeky guys here) is attributing this to Google’s cache.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"The Morphing PDF"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T19:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/patch-tuesday-coming-next-week/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has issued an advance notification for Patch Tuesday next week. The company said it expects to issue two patches, one for Windows and one for Office. Both are intended to patch vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution and both are rated “important.”\nMicrosoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for March 2010 here.\n","tags":["alert","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Patch Tuesday coming next week"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T19:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/whos-watching-you-really/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This morning while I was enjoying my coffee I received an event notification for my personal Facebook account. It was for a group called “See Who’s Spying On Your Profile – GET NOTIFIED -”. and “See Everyone Who Views Your Profile”. Immediately, my security hat went on and I started to investigate.\nAt first glace, they are both pyramid schemes. In both, you become a fan, then you have to suggest the page to 50 of your friends to move onto the next stage. From there the tactics diverge slightly. In the first one, you need to take a marketing quiz that asks for all sorts of personal info, and you need to put in your Facebook username and password, so they can “monitor” your profile. AND you have to provide them with your mobile number. Now wait a minute… why would they need my mobile number?\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"Who’s watching you really?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T19:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/adservers-compromised-in-latest-zbot-push/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"As we have commented before when content served up from adservers is compromised, the effects can be far reaching, potentially exposing huge numbers of victims to the malicious code as they innocently browse legitimate sites. The problem is further complicated by the fact that legitimate ad content is often heavily obfuscated, in order to evade ad-blocking technology.\nDuring the latter half of this week we have seen a whole batch of compromised adservers injected with malicious JavaScript to silently load malicious content from a remote site. A significant number of popular sites that load ads content from these servers have therefore been affected by this attack.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","report","review","Security"],"title":"Adservers compromised in latest Zbot push"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T18:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/twitter-hits-10-billion-tweets/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" It’s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. While Gigatweet’s counter is down due to over-traffic., you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold.\nThe milestone shows that Twitter’s still growing at a rapid pace: it broke 1 billion tweets in November 2008 and 5 billion tweets just four months ago.\nSo who was the lucky person that sent out tweet 10 billionth tweet?\nTweet #10 billion apparently belongs to a protected user, as API calls won’t allow us to see that specific status update. Via @timdorr, here is Tweet #9,999,999,999 and tweet #10,000,000,001.\n","tags":["News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter Hits 10 Billion Tweets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/android-gets-its-first-microsoft-app-tagreader/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Barcode and QR code reader applications are now standard fare for smartphones and can be commonly found for free in any of the major app stores. But far less common are comprehensive services that let users make their own QR codes for free.\nThis is why Microsoft’s TagReader, which was released in the Android Market today, is worth checking out. It’s similar to any number of barcode scanners available on the Android platform, except that it is designed to read Microsoft’s unique “Tags.”\n","tags":["Android","Google","Microsoft","Mobile","News"],"title":"Android gets its first Microsoft app: TagReader"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/pwn2own-interview-with-charlie-miller/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Charlie Miller, the Pwn2Own contest winner for two years in a row, gives his take on Internet security. Guess what — your Mac OS is no less vulnerable than its Microsoft Windows counterpart.\nWindows 7 or Snow Leopard, which of these two commercial OS will be harder to hack and why?\nWindows 7 is slightly more difficult because it has full ASLR (address space layout randomization) and a smaller attack surface (for example, no Java or Flash by default). Windows used to be much harder because it had full ASLR and DEP (data execution prevention). But recently, a talk at Black Hat DC showed how to get around these protections in a browser in Windows.\n","tags":["Interview"],"title":"Pwn2Own Interview with Charlie Miller"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/google-buys-flickrs-editing-tool-picnik/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" .png)\nWeb-based photo editing suite Picnik announced today that it has been acquired by Google for an unspecified amount that Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato called a “very, very happy number.”\nThe startup opened in 2005 and was chosen to be Flickr’s default photo editor in 2007 when Yahoo was introducing a host of new features to the popular photo sharing site. Long before Adobe released its Web-based version of Photoshop, Picnik was already going strong.\n","tags":["Android","Google","News","Yahoo"],"title":"Google buys Flickr's editing tool, Picnik"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/contraband-imports/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"One of the issues malware writers deal with is having their programs load and execute on a victim’s computer. An unwary victim may click on an email attachment and have the malware run once. But in order to continue to be of value to the author, that piece of malware has to arrange for itself to be run after the computer inevitably gets rebooted.\nThere are several well known ways to accomplish this task. The problem here is these methods are well known and security software know where to look. Which brings us to the topic of this blog entry. We recently came across a hacked copy of imm32.dll which is Microsoft’s Input Method Manager library. The authors inserted an extra imported library into the file’s import directory. The extra library name starts with “net” and the imported function name is randomized.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Contraband Imports"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:14:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/late-dash-by-spammers-for-2010-winter-olympics/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The 2010 Winter Olympics were held in Vancouver, Canada, from February 12-28. With more than 82 countries participating and millions across the globe catching day-to-day action, it was sadly quite obvious that we would see spam attacks centered on this event. However, the volume of spam relating to the Winter Olympics is actually very low, which is unlike the Beijing Olympics, when spam campaigns had started way before actual event. In the case of the Winter Olympics, spammers seem to be only now waking up from their slumber.\n","tags":["advice","report","review","spam","Security"],"title":"Late Dash by Spammers for 2010 Winter Olympics"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/everybody-uses-web-2-0-but-it-might-not-know-it/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Communications security firm FaceTime of Belmont, Calif., has released the results of a survey (of 1654 people) that strongly indicates we are all using a lot of Web 2.0 applications at work and a third of our IT staffs aren’t aware of it. It was FaceTime’s fifth annual survey.\nSocial media and Web 2.0 apps are being used by virtually all end users (99 percent) to support business processes, but 38 percent of IT professionals surveyed think there is no social networking on their networks.\n","tags":["News","report","Skype"],"title":"Everybody uses Web 2.0, but IT might not know it"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/google-wave-gets-email-notifications/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Google Wave has finally turned on email notifications as a feature for users who want to see immediate, hourly, or daily email notifications for new and updated waves.\nEmail updates can be turned on via the Inbox dropdown menu. Once on, Google Wave will notify you with a summary of updates to your waves and email you when you’re added to a new wave. Thankfully you’ll only receive one update for each individual wave — instead of receiving an email for each update to a wave — until you log into that wave again.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google Wave Gets Email Notifications"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-05T01:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/05/yahoo-mail-makes-friends-with-facebook/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Facebook Connect integration with Yahoo Mail! The new feature means that Yahoo Mail users can now connect their Facebook accounts and integrate their Facebook friends’ email addresses into their Yahoo Contacts list. Users can visit the Import Contacts page to be guided through he Facebook friend import process.\nWhat do you think of this, do you like it or dislike it. Tell us in the comments!\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media","Yahoo"],"title":"Yahoo Mail Makes Friends With Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T23:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/chat-with-malcode/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s time for your daily dose of “spot the fake program / avoid the fake program”.\nWhat is it this time? Well, if you have family members who are into webcams and chatting you might want to point them to this writeup because a new challenger has entered the ring:\nYes, “Chat Cam” is a rather smart looking (and entirely fake) program designed to make end users think they’re taking part in a large community of webcam owners. Clearly, the creator had the recently launched Chatroulette in mind when they made this one (if you’re not familiar with it, Chatroulette is a site where you jump from webcam chat to webcam chat over and over again, all within one large community of strangers. In practice, you tend to mash the “Next” button endlessly as one “chat” after another fails to materialise). This is what Chatroulette looks like – you’ll notice the similarity as we move further into the writeup:\n","tags":["Malware","review","rogue software","scam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Chat with malcode"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T23:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/fakeav-now-for-windows-7/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s been over a year since we first started seeing the familiar Windows XP My Computer page where it appears your drives are being scanned and it reports a bunch of non-existent malware on your computer. Yesterday I was investigating the latest hot news item where there was a FAMU (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University) sex tape released on the internet and sure enough I found many SEO poisoned links claiming to have the video. Imagine my surprise when I saw the following.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","report","review","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"FakeAV, now for Windows 7!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T21:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/phishing-scam-linked-to-valentines-day-movie/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec has been observing several spam and phishing attacks regarding the recent Valentine’s Day. One such phishing attack was on an e-card website that asked for user credentials in order to send Valentine’s Day greetings to loved ones. The legitimate e-card website has partnerships with several other brands and so accepts credentials from certain other websites as well. Hence, attackers can steal user information from several brands’ sites by phishing on just one e-card website. This particular attack asked for users’ credentials for a popular information services website. The phishing domain was hosted on servers in China and has been reported as “domain tasting.” Domain tasting is a situation in which a domain name is used for a small period of time and is checked to see if it is making enough money. If it doesn’t earn enough, the domain name is deleted and the registrant is refunded the entire registration fee. This is a technique used by attackers to perform phishing activity for small periods of time at low costs.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Phishing","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Phishing Scam Linked to Valentine’s Day Movie"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/mariposa-botnet-take-down/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Readers may well have read some of the news stories posted after yesterday’s news concerning the take down of the “Mariposa” botnet. So what is Mariposa?\nMariposa is the name given to a particular botnet that started getting some attention during the first half of 2009. The botnet was dubbed Mariposa thanks to the name of one of the C\u0026C servers that is used:\nbutterfly dot sinip dot es\nsince Mariposa is the Spanish word for butterfly.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Mariposa botnet take down"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T19:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/download-official-spring-theme-pack-for-windows-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has released new spring theme for windows 7 to bring the feeling of season change right on your desktop. It is named Czech and is a light, simple and beautiful theme with eight eye catching nature wallpapers.\nJust download the theme and double click on it to apply. After applying the theme you can customize and tune color scheme according to your choice.\nDownload: Czech Spring Theme\n","tags":["Microsoft"],"title":"Download Official Spring Theme pack for Windows 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T19:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/too-many-passwords-here-is-a-solution/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"How many sites do you log into? Bank, email, shopping, work tools, social networks — each one wants a password, and serious sites add rules about length or character types.\nYou already know not to use the same password everywhere. Recycling variants (david1, david2, david3) is not much better: one leak still maps to the rest. For what weak choices look like in the wild, see Passwords used by the Conficker worm.\n","tags":["Safety Tips","Password","Security"],"title":"Too many passwords? Here is a solution!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T19:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/realdvd-permanently-banned-in-us-real-pays-hollywood-4-5-million/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The battle over RealNetworks’ DVD copying software, called RealDVD, has finally come to a close, and Real has lost.\nJudge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court, Northern District of California ruled today in favor of the DVD Copy Control Association, who argued that RealDVD actually made illegal copies that violated the Content Scramble System (CSS) license agreement.\nThe case began in late 2008 when RealDVD was only a couple of weeks old. RealNetworks preemptively sued the DVD Copy Control Association for the right to copy DVDs, using a previous case (DVD CCA v. Kaleidescape Inc.) as a hopeful legal precedent.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"RealDVD permanently banned in US, Real pays Hollywood $4.5 million"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T19:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/the-internet-as-a-moral-ground/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"“…in that space one can easily indulge in depravity, lies, vulgarity…”\nHere’s a sort of comment about the Internet that you don’t see much in the news.\nThe Russian government news service RiaNovosti is reporting that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia (head of the Russian Orthodox Church), told school students in Moscow that “Nowadays the Internet is a kind of laboratory where an individual should be formed and where a character should be sharpened.”\n","tags":["News","review"],"title":"The Internet as a moral ground"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T19:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/u-s-census-bureau-warning-of-phishing-scams/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The U.S. Census Bureau is warning of phishing and other scams that are using the 2010 Census as bait. Here is the warning from the bureau’s web site:\nIf you are contacted for any of the following reasons — Do Not Participate. It is NOT the U.S. Census Bureau.\nPhishing:\n‘Phishing’ is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, social security numbers, bank account or credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out by email and it often directs users to enter sensitive information at a fake web site whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","report","scam","Security"],"title":"U.S. Census Bureau warning of phishing scams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T18:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/malicious-iframes-on-google-analiticsdotnet/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Right! A site registered in the state of “Taliban.”\nYou’re really going to go to a site with this registration:\nNice work SANS.\nThanks to Daniel Wesemann at SANS:\nhttp://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=8350\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Malicious iframes on Google-analitics(dot)net"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T01:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/quarantine-for-infected-pcs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft Vice President of Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney, in a keynote address at the RSA security conference in San Francisco yesterday, called for quarantines on malware-infected PCs. His remarks were widely covered by a variety of web news outlets.\nHe compared the threat from infected PCs with the threat from smokers in public places and resulting bans on smoking because of second-hand smoke: “You have a right to infect and give yourself illness. You don’t have the right to infect your neighbor. Computers are the same way.” Charney didn’t discuss specific techniques.\n","tags":["Microsoft","News"],"title":"Quarantine for infected PCs?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T01:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/another-bot-bites-the-dust/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Remember Microsoft’s action against 277 Waledac domains last week? Well, that’s one way of going after a botnet…\nAnother way of shutting down a botnet? Arrest the botmasters!\nThree Spanish citizens have been arrested for running the “Mariposa” botnet. The three reportedly have no criminal records and have limited hacking skills. Mariposa is a Butterfly Kit based botnet, and the kit is no longer for sale.\nDetails are available from the BBC and The Register. Kudos to those involved in the arrests.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Another Bot Bites the Dust?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T01:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/haiti-relief-email-scams-still-circulate/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Want a place to check the legitimacy of a charity?\n“Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator has become the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities. In our quest to help donors, our team of professional analysts has examined tens of thousands of non-profit financial documents. As a result, we know as much about the true fiscal operations of charities as anyone. We’ve used this knowledge to develop an unbiased, objective, numbers-based rating system to assess the financial health of over 5,000 of America’s best-known charities.”\n","tags":["advice","Phishing","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Haiti relief email scams still circulate"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T01:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/battlefield-keygens-are-bad-company/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"In the same way that media event X guarantees Rogue Antispyware Y, a new and highly anticipated videogame that’s about ready to launch will similarly bring out the scams and fakes.\nIf you have any family members that like their PC games but perhaps aren’t clued up on their Internet fakeouts, you might want to warn them that no matter how cool the so-called “Battlefield: Bad Company 2” keygens look, they should steer clear:\n","tags":["advice","alert","Gaming","Malware","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Battlefield Keygens are Bad Company"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T00:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/microsoft-updates-ms010-15-fixed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It won’t work if you have a rootkit infection, but it won’t blue screen your machine either.\nMicrosoft has reissued Security Bulletin MS010-15 from last month to work around a problem that had occurred when a WinXP user attempted to install the patch on a machine that was infected with a rootkit. (blue screen, blue screen)\nJerry Bryant, Microsoft’s senior security communications manager lead, writing on the company TechNet blog said that the new installation packages for MS10-015 have new logic that will prevent the security update from installing on rootkit-infected systems. Microsoft also is offering guidance for those with infected machines and a scanning tool that can detect system conditions that will prevent the patch from applying itself.\n","tags":["Microsoft","News","Updates"],"title":"Microsoft updates MS010-15 [Fixed]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T00:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/steve-ballmer-talks-bing-google-xbox-and-windows-phone/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"For anyone that missed Microsoft CEO’s Q\u0026A during the Search Marketing Expo West yesterday, a transcript is now available online. I went through and picked out key quotes, so that you don’t have to read the whole thing.\nSeveral things stand out from Ballmer’s comments:\nMobile operators that want a search engine other than Bing can’t have Windows Phone 7 Series. Microsoft almost certainly is stirring up trouble for Google in Europe through third parties. Microsoft isn’t interested — at least for now — in releasing a Bing application for Android phones. A Bing for iPhone search deal is still possible, simply because Ballmer deflected the question rather than denying it. Twitter is a great Microsoft partner, but the value of an acquisition is “not clear.” My favorite quote from the Q\u0026A: “I haven’t found that when you’re trying to sell something to somebody yelling is very effective.” How funny is that. coming from boisterous Ballmer?\n","tags":["Android","Apple","Bing","Google","Microsoft","News","report","Data \u0026 AI"],"title":"Steve Ballmer talks Bing, Google, Xbox and Windows Phone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-04T00:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/04/big-brother-in-social-networking-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"“Big Brother Brazil” is a Brazilian reality TV program adapted from the popular Big Brother television series. The show is about a group of people living together in a purpose-built Big Brother house, isolated from the outside world, while being monitored by cameras 24×7. The television series is viewed by scores of people during primetime hours, but live feeds are also available from multiple cameras in the house on the Web. Part of the popularity is due to the fact that some of the videos are suitable only for adult viewing.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","report","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Big Brother in Social Networking Scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-03T12:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/03/beware-of-targeted-scams-and-phishing-attacks/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"According to latest State of Spam and Phishing report, scam and phishing messages accounted for 21 percent of all spam, which is the highest level recorded since the inception of the report. For comparison, these types of spam represented only 10 percent of total spam a year ago.\nHistorically, the primary vector for spam attacks was to blast out as many messages as possible, hoping that someone would open a message and click on the call to action. The call to action could be anything from clicking on a link to purchase medications, to visiting an adult website. While we continue to see high volumes of spam originating from expansive botnets, spammers are also moving towards a sophisticated and more targeted approach to spam. Two primary examples of this trend are 419/Nigerian type scams and phishing messages.\n","tags":["advice","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Beware of Targeted Scams and Phishing Attacks!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T23:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/koobface-makes-a-comeback/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A new KOOBFACE variant is again making the rounds in the social-networking scene. According to Trend Micro researcher, Norman Ingal, the malware employs Facebook’s Private Message feature to proliferate.\nThe threat arrives as a Facebook private message that does not bear a subject but contains a supposed link to a YouTube video. Taking a closer look at the link, however, indicates that it is not an authentic YouTube link as in previous attacks.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Social Media","spam","YouTube","Security"],"title":"KOOBFACE Makes a Comeback"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T23:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/im-feeling-lucky/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Criminals like to attack the biggest target because BIGGER generally provides a better Return On Investment (ROI). Windows is a good example. Mac is indeed safer than Windows but it isn’t necessarily because Mac is more secure. Windows has a larger market share and that equals more potential victims.\nHow about search engines? What is the biggest search engine on the block? Google — and the bad guys know it. The result?\n","tags":["advice","Bing","Google","report","review","Search"],"title":"I'm Feeling Lucky?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T22:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/dont-press-f1/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Here’s a new vector: exploiting a Windows vulnerability through an Internet Explorer help menu Visual Basic script: “get ‘em to hit F1 and you own ‘em.”\nMicrosoft is warning of a VBScript vulnerability in Internet Explorer (on Win2K, XP and Server03) that could be used to run malicious code. A malicious operator could create a web site that displays a specially crafted dialog box and prompts a victim to press the F1 key (help menu.) The exploit could then execute malicious code on a victim machine. (Windows versions that are not vulnerable are: Vista, Win7, Server08 R2 and Server08.)\n","tags":["advice","Internet Explorer","Malware","Microsoft","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Don’t press F1"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T22:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/apple-sues-htc-for-iphone-patent-infringement/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Apple has sued smartphone maker HTC for patent infringement, citing 20 patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, architecture, and hardware, a statement from the company said this morning.\nA statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs today said, “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”\n","tags":["Apple","Mobile"],"title":"Apple sues HTC for iPhone patent infringement"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T01:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/for-india-register-for-do-not-calldisturb-ndnc-to-stop-promotional-calls-and-messages-from-telecom-operators/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Do you want to avoid unwanted telemarketing calls and SMS, arriving on your Mobile or Landline phones from Telecom companies which aim to provide additional services, promotions, offers, plans, tariffs, etc?\nNational Do Not Call Registry (NDNC Registry) is a measure from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, whose main objective is to control Unsolicited Commercial Communication (UCC) and let you get rid of it.\nTo Register in NDNC Registry – Call 1909 (toll free) or SMS START DND to 1909 (toll free). In case you want to de-register yourself from the NDNC registry SMS STOP DND to 1909 (toll free).\nAlternatively, users can visit the ‘Do not Call/Disturb’ registration webpage of their desired telecom subscribers to apply for same.\n","tags":["Other"],"title":"[for India] Register for ‘Do Not Call/Disturb’ (NDNC) to Stop Promotional calls and messages from Telecom Operators"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T01:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/60-compromised-sites-with-seo-poisoning/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"More than 60 websites have been found to be hotbeds for SEO poisoning. Each of these domains host hundreds of possible matches for search keys.\nAlso, the topics in one domain overlap with that of the other domain, thus making it possible that they will both emerge in the search results. Topics range from the Winter Olympics Luge Crash to the death of Alexander McQueen and even to NASCAR Schedule.\n","tags":["hack","Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"60+ Compromised Sites with SEO Poisoning"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T01:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/baidu-register-com-replaced-its-dns-credentials-for-some-guy-in-a-chat-room/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Last month, Baidu, the leading search engine in China, filed suit against US-based Internet registrar Register.com, in a legal event that took place at the height of the debate over Google’s continued business dealings with China. Baidu accused the registrar of changing its DNS records, so that customers were redirected to a completely different site purporting to represent the “Iranian Cyber Army.” But that original suit was heavily redacted, so we didn’t know the specifics of the alleged defacement. This week, US District Court in New York released the unredacted version of Baidu’s complaint, and now, as the man once said, we know the rest of the story.\n","tags":["hack","News","report","review","Security"],"title":"Baidu: Register.com replaced its DNS credentials for some guy in a chat room"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T01:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/skype-gives-up-on-microsoft-will-work-with-operators-on-windows-mobile/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Popular instant messaging, voice chat, and video conferencing client Skype and Skype Lite are no longer available on Windows Mobile devices.\nThe company says, “We’ve chosen to withdraw Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Mobile because we want to offer our new customers an improved mobile experience — much like the version that has proved so popular on the iPhone, and which is now available on Symbian phones. Our focus is on providing a rich user experience that allows you to enjoy free Skype-to-Skype and low cost calls as easily on the move as you do at your desktop. We felt that Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Mobile were not offering the best possible Skype experience.“\n","tags":["Mobile","News","Skype"],"title":"Skype gives up on Microsoft, will work with operators on Windows Mobile"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T01:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/hacker-fail/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Very funny:\nThe story starts with an guy insulting everyone on the IRC channel. Most people there believed it was rather funny, but it got even more funny. For information: The dangerous hacker is called bitchchecker and the one being hacked and original author of the comments, who is talking here, is known as Elch.\n127.0.0.1 is always the IP-adress of the computer you’re currently using, any request there will return to your computer.\n","tags":["Fun","hack","Interesting","Security"],"title":"Hacker Fail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T00:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/this-you-whats-the-point-of-phishing-a-twitter-account/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In Additional to my last post: http://boelectronic.blogspot.com/2010/03/twitter-phished-its-easy-mistake.html\nWe’ve received some questions regarding recent phishing attacks conducted against Twitter.com.\nTweets and Direct Messages (DM) containing phases such as “This you??” or “LOL is this you” are linking victims towards a Twitter login phishing page. If the bait is taken and victim enters their password, Twitter’s infamous “fail whale” is displayed and the user is returned to their account. They might not even realize that their account details have been compromised.\n","tags":["advice","Phishing","scam","Social Media","Twitter","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"This you?? What's the point of phishing a Twitter account?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T00:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/twitter-phished-its-an-easy-mistake/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"London, England (CNN) — Twitter this week endured a number of “phishing” attacks, in which some users unwittingly gave out their passwords to malicious sites. Haven’t we all learned to keep our passwords to ourselves, you ask_?_ Perhaps. But the truth is we’re all vulnerable to social engineering, and two major Web trends are creating further confusion for new Internet users.\nThe anatomy of these attacks is simple: You receive a message, seemingly from a friend on a social network. The message contains a link and some strong incentive to click it — in the case of the most recent Twitter attack, the note simply asks “This You????.” When you click the link, you’re prompted to log in again to view the page.\n","tags":["News","Phishing","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter phished? It's an easy mistake"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T00:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/not-the-real-virustotal-com/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"In Additional to my last Post: http://boelectronic.blogspot.com/2010/03/free-fakeav-at-virus-total-thats-not.html\nVirusTotal.com [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirusTotal.com] is a brilliant site that helps both public and researchers alike determine if an executable file they have is potentially malicious or not.\nJulio Canto (of VirusTotal fame) has noticed that somebody decided to cash in on the good name of the site with the following domain:\nvirus-total(dot)in\nGo there, and you’ll see a message claiming the site is a “free online antivirus scanning service, click SCAN to begin scanning:“\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Phishing","report","review","scam","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"NOT the real VirusTotal.com"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T00:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/the-u-s-census-2010-dont-be-counted-as-a-victim-of-online-fraud/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s been ten years already; can you believe it? I’m talking about the U.S. Census. It’s been ten years since the last one. Time to do it again. No, it wasn’t on my calendar either. To remind all of us and to encourage us to participate, the U.S. Census Bureau is spending $340 million to get the word out. There was even a Super Bowl ad.\nThe Census Bureau will not be the only ones trying to get our attention and encouraging us to help them collect data. Cybercriminals will be doing the same thing. But they’ll be trying to fool us into thinking they are the Census Bureau. And the data they’ll be collecting will be a little different. It will be personal information they can use to rip us off.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"The U.S. Census 2010: Don’t be Counted as a Victim of Online Fraud"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-02T00:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/02/waldec-vs-microsoft-and-then-twitter/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There were a couple of news items that I thought were interesting enough, albeit unrelated, to comment on. The first (story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8537771.stm)\nis that Microsoft has taken legal action to shut down the Waldec botnet, and folks are divided about whether there was any point to it.\nWhile I don’t expect it to cause any noticeable lessening of spam, I’m pleased that they did it. Spam-sending is a business, after all, and if you can create a situation where it costs more to run it than they are making, then they might actually stop. After all, if your outgo exceeds your income, then your upkeep becomes your downfall.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Waldec vs Microsoft and then Twitter!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T23:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/hacktivism-is-following-current-controversies/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"If history is any gauge, this is probably the first of several incidents like this.\nThe Register – which is worth reading twice a day for its insanely funny headlines if nothing else – is reporting that a hacker (hacktivist?), possibly British, who goes by the handle Neo, has gotten his hands on tax documents for about 1,000 companies and is tweeting the salaries of Latvian bank managers and other execs to Latvian TV.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Hacktivism is following current controversies"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T23:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/free-fakeav-at-virus-total-thats-not-virustotal/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"VirusTotal has been well known to most readers of the blog. It’s a free virus and malware online scan service which allows submitters to test a particular file against a multitude of malware scanners. So, it’s not highly surprising that malware authors would try to use that name to further their gain.\nToday we came across such a sample arriving at one of our spamtraps through a car-related forum. The message looks like this:\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","spam","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"Free FakeAV at Virus-Total (That’s not VirusTotal)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T22:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/multiple-personality-disorder/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Are malware authors and spammers suffering from the same affliction of “word salad“, or are they perhaps devoted students of Afringlish? Why else would one combine random words in an attempt to look legitimate?\nThe reason is a simple one – not only are humans good at associating meaning to names, they are also exceptionally good at filling in the blanks, while machines are not. Thus, by carefully selecting particular names for insertion into the version information of malware samples, such as those of reputable software houses, the authors attempt to exploit this human condition. Presumably, they also hope to bypass security scanners which approve files based on such superficial attributes.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Multiple personality disorder?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T22:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/fighting-online-fraud-in-au/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce began its 2010 Fraud Week campaign today with release of the first Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) scams activity report. Wednesday it will release information to help small businesses protect themselves.\nThe March 1-7 Fraud Week hopes to reduce the incidence and impact of fraud and scams. The annual event tries to co-ordinate the release of information for consumers, timed to coincide with the International Consumer Protection Enforcement Network Global Consumer Fraud Prevention Month.\n","tags":["advice","News","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Fighting online fraud in .au"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T21:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/do-not-even-turn-on-your-ps3-today-sony-warns/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Since yesterday evening, PlayStation 3 users have been reporting difficulties in connecting their consoles to the PlayStation Network for online gameplay and system updates. While it was first thought to be a network-related issue, Sony has warned that there is a much more widespread issue currently affecting older PlayStation 3’s.\nSony’s offical statement lists the following errors as a part of this internal clock bug:\nThe date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000. When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F).” When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.” When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained (8001050F).” Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date. “If you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data,” Sony warned this afternoon.\n","tags":["Gaming","News","Sony"],"title":"Do not even turn on your PS3 today, Sony warns"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T20:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/most-used-spam-categories-in-february-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Since January we publish monthly reports about the categories of the spam messages which got sent around the last month. These categories are detected by Avira’s AntiSpam engine.\nBetween January and February 2010 there didn’t change much in the spam landscape. The top 3 is still occupied by Pharmacy, Other (spams which don’t fit any category) and watches. However, this month the Malware category made its way on the 4th with 4.9% after it was only 0.5% in January.\n","tags":["report","spam","Security"],"title":"Most used Spam Categories in February 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T20:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/analyzing-pdf-files/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We’ve been seeing a gradual shift in malicious PDF file coding (no surprise there, we know malware authors can and do adapt their techniques).\nFor a long time, we saw malicious PDF files that were simple enough to allow us to readily decipher the intent of the malicious code — shell code, download/execute, drop and load, et cetera.\nNow we’re seeing more and more complex obfuscation being used, which requires us to break down the PDF file. This can make an Analyst’s daily life more miserable or interesting, especially as the obfuscation can bypass automated analysis tools and even AV detectors.\n","tags":["Malware","review","Security"],"title":"Analyzing PDF Files"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T11:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/massive-earthquake-in-chile-leads-to-a-surge-of-rogue-antivirus/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"A massive earthquake struck near the Chilean city of Concepcion in the early hours of the morning of February 27th, 2010. The quake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale was considerably stronger than the one that recently caused widespread destruction on the island of Haiti. Fortunately, despite the size of this latest quake, so far there has been few reported casualties. The quake occurred near the coast and tsumani warnings were issued for many countries bordering on the Pacific ocean. Unfortunately as with any major news event, miscreants are not slow to pounce when such opportunities arise to further their aims.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Firefox","Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Massive Earthquake in Chile Leads to a Surge of Rogue Antivirus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T11:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/old-websites-are-also-used-in-spam-seos/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A few days ago, I blogged saying that Old websites don’t die they just get infected the other scenario is that they become part of a spammers SEO campaign.\nWorking today, I went to check to see if the local police authority had cleaned up their old web page. So I wgetted the file and scanned it. It was no longer infected (hooray!) but the file was quite big. Opening the file in lynx (a simple web\nbrowser) I saw:\n","tags":["hack","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Old websites are also used in spam SEOs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-03-01T10:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/03/01/icq-scam-in-the-wild/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I have received a message this morning from an ICQ account with the following text written in UTF-8 and plain text:\nThe message from ICQ.com\n******\nHello.\n_ICQ.com: we Remind you that all ICQ numbers which have not passed activation, 1.1.2010 will be removed from a server without restoration possibility. _\n_The status of yours ICQ numbers: NOT activated. _\nFor activation send SMS on number 8353 with the text 144444\nIn the reciprocal message you receive acknowledgement on activation and your password from number.\nICQ.com Together with AOL.com\n","tags":["AOL","ICQ","Instant Messaging","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"ICQ scam in the wild"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-26T21:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/26/seo-poisoning-not-in-well-but-its-aiming-for-the-water-heater/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"People looking to take advantage of the savings from the government during these harder financial times are being hit with other financial burdens (Rogue AV software).\nOur (environmentally conscious) researcher Adam Thomas heard about a “green” hot water heater that might be a good addition to his Earth-friendly home. So he did a Web search for “GE geo spring water heater.”\nWhat he found wasn’t Earth or anything else-friendly! SEO poisoning galore:\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"SEO poisoning not in well, but it’s aiming for the water heater"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-26T20:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/26/insight-into-fake-av-seo/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In this post I want to highlight how SEO attacks are working:\nPages using server side kits to fool search engine bots into ranking them high in results are uploaded to legitimate web sites. If all goes to plan, when a user searches for a popular term, high up in the search engine results are links to these pages. In the example below, the malicious SEO page was the 2nd item in the search results (highlighted in blue). When the user arrives on such a page (highlighted in green in the example below), the referrer is typically checked to ensure they came from a search engine. If so, there are redirected (302 redirect) to another site (orange below). There are typically additional levels of redirection from this point. In the example shown below, the user is bounced from the .org to the .in site (purple). Finally, the user will be redirected to the fake AV distribution site (red). This is where the user receives the usual visual trickery, in order to fool them into installing the rogue application. ","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Phishing","report","review","scam","Security"],"title":"Insight into fake AV SEO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-26T19:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/26/trojiframe-dy-old-websites-dont-die-they-just-get-infected/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Earlier this week Sophos informed a UK Local Police Authority (Hertfordshire) that a website they owned was infected with Troj/IFrame-DY.\nIt turns out that the Police Authority has a new site and the infected site is an old one that just leads the user to the new site:\nUnfortunately, the old site also contains a malicious script, appended after the closing /HTML tag.\nThere are several ways of migrating users to a new website:\n","tags":["alert","hack","Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Troj/IFrame-DY: Old websites don’t die they just get infected"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-26T18:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/26/do-i-know-you/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Imagine that you’re sitting at home catching up on your email backlog. In comes an email from your ISP, FooBarBazCo (some creativity required here, I know). The email seems to be from Technical Support – ‘From: FooBarBazCo.com Team’ – and states that you need to update your email settings as a result of a recent security upgrade. Can you trust it?\nToday we observed an increase in spam messages containing links to a particular malicious URL. The messages masquerade as having come from mail administrators, with the ‘from’ address spoofed so that they appear to have come from the same network domain as the address to which the mails are sent (the ‘from’ and ‘to’ addresses are actually identical, although this will not be visible in most email programs).\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Do I Know You?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-26T15:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/26/facebooks-news-feed-patent-could-mean-lawsuits/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" (CNN) (CNET) — Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming “feed” technology — more specifically, “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network,” complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.\nThe implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out earlier on Thursday, are far-flung: Facebook may choose to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent.\n","tags":["AOL","Facebook","News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Facebook's news-feed patent could mean lawsuits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T20:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/zeus-botnet-continues-2500-victims-estimated/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Herndon, Va., forensics firm NetWitness has said that the Zeus botnet has breached the networks of nearly 2,500 organizations in nearly 200 countries, including 10 U.S. federal agencies. NetWitness researchers said many victims are Fortune 500 companies in energy, finance and high tech sectors.\nNetWitness based its conclusions on information from a 75-gigabyte collection of data that they intercepted. It was information the botnet had stolen in one month.\nThe Zeus botnet, which started in 2008, is believed to have 74,000 machines infected.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","review","Security"],"title":"Zeus botnet continues: 2,500 victims estimated"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T20:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/scammers-offering-tax-refunds/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Fraudsters never seem to rest. They have now turned their attention towards phishing using the Indian Income Tax Department’s name and branding. It is the season of tax returns in India and it is well known that people will file their income tax returns for the end of the fiscal year in India. Hence, phishers have chosen the right time to phish the market since most users will not be aware of these attacks.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Scammers Offering Tax Refunds"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T20:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/apple-iphone-warranty-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec has recently observed phishing scams targeting Apple iPhones in order to gain serial numbers, IMEI, model, and capacity, etc.\nWhat is an IMEI? An IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) is a 15-digit unique number used by GSM networks to identify valid devices. Every GSM, WCDMA, or iDEN mobile phone (and even the odd satellite phone) has an IMEI. It can be found under the battery of the device or by typing *#06# on the mobile. If your phone or device is lost or stolen you can report it to your service provider, providing the IMEI number. The service provider can then blacklist the IMEI number, rendering the device unusable in that country.\n","tags":["Apple","Mobile","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Apple iPhone Warranty Scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T19:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/30-percent-of-u-s-is-totally-safe-from-internet-threats/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A survey of 54,000 households (129,000 people) commissioned by National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) last year found that 30 percent of U.S residents did not use the Internet at home or at work.\nThe study, based on Census Bureau work, found that 64 percent of households had connections. In 2007, only 51 did.\nThe NTIA researchers found that of those without connections, 38 percent said they didn’t need Internet and 26 percent said it was too expensive. In rural areas, 11 percent said they didn’t have any Internet access available. In urban areas, one percent said they couldn’t get it.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"30 percent of U.S. is totally safe from Internet threats"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T19:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/exploit-for-zero-day-vuln-in-firefox-is-for-sale/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Evgeny Legerov, founder of Intevydis in Moscow, has created an exploit that hits a previously unknown heap-corruption vulnerability in the Firefox browser. The code isn’t readily available though, since he’s put it in a module to the automated exploitation system he sells (reportedly at a considerable price.) Legerov has not provided information on the vulnerability to Mozilla.\nThe Intevydis site says: “Exploitation frameworks are not new on the market, but only we may offer you hundreds of CANVAS modules for unpatched and unknown vulnerabilities in highly popular software products.”\n","tags":["Firefox","Malware","Mozilla","scam","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Exploit for zero-day vuln in Firefox is for sale"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T19:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/symantec-reputation-based-security-suspicious-insight-detections-on-virustotal/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec recently upgraded their scanner on VirusTotal to include their new reputation-based security engine. That has caused a spike in their detection rates, in particular Suspicious.Insight detections, and so I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain some of the background and what is going on.\nSo what exactly is a Suspicious.Insight detection? These detections are derived from Symantec’s new reputation-based security technology. They highlight files that have not yet developed a strong reputation (either good or bad) amongst Symantec’s community of users. their goal is to keep their users’ machines safe, and part of achieving that goal means helping their users make informed choices about the files they allow on to their systems. Suspicious.Insight detections help shine a spotlight on files that have not yet developed a full reputation.\n","tags":["News","report","review","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"Symantec Reputation-based Security: Suspicious.Insight detections on VirusTotal"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T19:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/0day-vuln-in-adobe-download-manager-disclosed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" First, make a note: after Adobe updates, restart your machine immediately to remove the Adobe Download Manger – it can be a vector for malcode.\nNow, back to our story.\nAviv Raff has discovered a vulnerability with Adobe’s web site in combination with its Download Manager, an ActiveX script that is used to download updates for Reader and Flash. After a Reader or Flash update the download manager remains running on a user’s machine until it is rebooted. Malicious operators could exploit it to download their code of choice.\n","tags":["0-Day","Adobe","News","Vulnerability"],"title":"0day vuln in Adobe Download Manager disclosed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T18:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/antivirus-not/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"“Dammed thieves. Stole our logo. I suppose we should be flattered, though.”\n— A.E.\nOld rogue, new package:\nAntivirusProtectionCenter av2009.exe : crc6:7f3d73762762 crc8:003091628c68decc md5:d71d1e303ab963fdae76936ba52a05b7\\\nAMC.exe : crc6:1d6922972762 crc8:003005cfbb91b729 md5:e5555754fd758fc2be1374796f9433e2\\\nHash’s different from their PersonalAntiMalware added 2/16/2010\nopener_.exe : crc6:8ee75c08081d \\ crc8:00dc55e5aaa82efa md5:5bb290cd1eb419ca98ca1f31273f7219\\\n“It’s the same gang that had the code saying ‘hello Sunbelt software’ They are watching us.” — P.J.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Antivirus NOT"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T18:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/internet-users-skip-security-because-of-jargon/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Representatives of computer companies and governments meeting at the EastWest Institute security meeting in Brussels said that an industry culture of obscure jargon is preventing the world’s two billion Internet users from putting security measures in place to protect themselves.\nThe group met to figure out how to protect computer users from massive abuse, fraud, online theft, vandalism and espionage.\nThe New York Times story carried the following quotes from those at the meeting:\n","tags":["advice","News","report","review"],"title":"Internet users skip security because of jargon"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T17:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/the-ru-substitutions-for-cn-domains/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"In the month of January, we reported a drop in .cn spam. This was due to changes in the domain registration process introduced by CNNIC. In the first week of February, the .cn spam volume fell further and fluctuated between 0 and 4 percent of total URL spam.\nAnother interesting trend was observed during this period. On January 21 the volume of spam containing the .ru top-level domain (TLD) spiked up to 9 percent, and rose further up to close to 40 percent on February 8. Upon closer analysis, it was observed that the .cn domains used in the health spam attacks had been replaced with .ru domains.\n","tags":["spam","Security"],"title":"The .ru Substitutions for .cn Domains"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T17:02:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/phishing-the-brands-of-online-auction-marketing-tools/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The popularity of online auctions paves way for the development of online auction marketing tools. These tools are software applications that are intended to facilitate the sellers’ side of popular online auction websites. Some of the tools that help sellers in auctions are: image hosting to display galleries of their products, listing of best bidders in a single template, automatic inventory systems to notify sellers during low stocks, etc. With the help of these tools, online auctions are easier and time saving.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Phishing the Brands of Online Auction Marketing Tools"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-21T16:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/21/do-they-know-its-not-christmas-time-at-all/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I saw something quite funny when checking out the spam feeds the other day. An attachment kept appearing, once in a while, with a name of Christmas Card.zip. It was making sporadic appearances in the feeds (and the number of spam email messages was quite low), but there were a couple of these odd messages at equally odd hours of the day:\nThe email message itself was a run-of-the-mill electronic greeting card with an HTML body containing a nice Flash animation—the Flash animation actually comes from a legitimate source (123greetings.com). The email body contains a message asking the user to open the attachment to see who sent the email. Of course, opening the attachment yields a malicious file. The name of the file inside is _**Christmas Card.htm[MANY SPACES].exe **_and it is already detected by Symantec as W32.Ackantta.G@mm.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Do They Know it’s (not) Christmas Time at All?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-16T21:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/16/the-facebook-team-informs-you/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In the last two days our lab has detected a flood of email messages that seem to have been sent by the Facebook team urging users to submit a new account agreement. We’ve seen around 16,000 since yesterday.\nThe subject of the message is UPDATED ACCOUNT AGREEMENT and the attached file is called AGREEMENT.ZIP.\nThe message is like the following:\nUsers are required to submit a new account agreement before a certain date. If not, their Facebook account will be restricted. The message also contains detailed instructions on how to do it.\n","tags":["Facebook","Malware","Social Media","spam","Security"],"title":"The Facebook Team informs you…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-16T19:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/16/security-advisory-adobe-reader/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s Fat Tuesday — time for an Adobe Update.\nAdobe plans to release a security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat later today.\nRead Security Advisory APSB10-07 for additional details.\n","tags":["Adobe","alert","Updates","Security"],"title":"Security Advisory, Adobe Reader"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-14T19:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/14/tigers-play-too-rough-on-valentines-day/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"While most sane people around the world are enjoying a romantic Valentine’s Day today, we at SophosLabs remain vigilant on the front line of the war against malware.\nThis year, Valentines Day coincides with the Chinese New Year as well as the start of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and many malware attacks have centred around SEO poisoning of these and other topical search terms.\nThe Chinese New Year of the Tiger is proving a popular target, especially as this ties in with any Tiger Woods related searches:\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Tiger’s play too rough on Valentines Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-14T01:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/14/unusual-valentines-gift-unwraps-fakeav/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"While everyone is searching the web for the unusual gift on Valentine’s Day, Cybercriminals take this opportunity to propagate Rouge Antivirus.\nI have searched for the keywords “unusual-valentines-day-gifts”, gives the following results:\nClicking the highlighted link above will lead to fake message such as “Alert! Your system is exposed to risk of virus attack. It’s highly recommended to check your PC immediately. Press OK to start the scan right now”.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Unusual Valentine’s Gift Unwraps FakeAV"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T20:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/tidserv-and-ms10-015/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In the past, viruses and computer threats were created simply for the sake of it. Sometimes these threats would wipe your hard drive clean—just to let you know you’d been owned. This is not the case anymore; nowadays most of the threats we see are profit-oriented and try to keep a very low profile so that they aren’t easily detectable by security software.\nBackdoor.Tidserv does a very good job in that sense, especially with the latest version (TDL3), which uses an advanced rootkit technology to hide its presence on a system by infecting one of the low-level kernel drivers and then covering its tracks. While the rootkit is active there is no easy way to detect the infection, and because it goes so deep into the kernel, most users cannot see anything wrong in the system.\n","tags":["advice","Malware","Microsoft","Updates","Security"],"title":"Tidserv and MS10-015"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T20:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/sun-virtualbox-update-3-1-4-57640/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.\nSome of the features of VirtualBox are:\nModularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don’t have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.\nVirtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.\n","tags":["AMD","Updates"],"title":"Sun VirtualBox Update [3.1.4.57640]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T20:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/google-chrome-dev-channel-update-5-0-322-2/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" The Google Chrome dev channel has been updated to 5.0.322.2 for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms\nAll\n[r38242] Don’t crash when a theme specifies a nonexistent image. (Issue: 31719) Mac\n[r38319] Honor modifiers for clicks on home button – cmd-clicking the home button now opens your home page in a new tab. (Issue: 34900) [r38204] Implemented writing direction context menu in text input fields. [r38504] Add local storage nodes to the cookie manager (Issue: 33068) Linux\n","tags":["Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"Google Chrome Dev Channel Update [5.0.322.2]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T01:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/warning-over-sexy-instant-message-called-fembot/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"(BBC) Lonely internet users are being warned about Fembot, a piece of malicious software that poses as a flirtatious woman looking to chat on instant messaging services.\nVictims are persuaded to give out personal information that could be used for fraud or identity theft, according to security experts.\nFembot was first spotted in 2007 but hasn’t been seen much since then.\nHowever, there are signs she may be back on the scene in time for Valentine’s Day.\n","tags":["Instant Messaging","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Warning over sexy instant message called ‘Fembot'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T01:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/p2p-research-clue-needed/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" At the ShmooCon hacker conference in Washington, D.C., last week two security researchers showed the very sensitive information that people inadvertently make available over peer-to-peer networks.\nIn their presentation, “Information disclosure via P2P networks: Why stealing an identity via Gnutella is like clubbing baby seals,” pen testers Larry Pesce and Mick Douglas said they found a lot of music, porn, malcode collections and the following:\ndriver’s licenses, passport and tax return forms with Social Security numbers; someone’s will A retirement analysis form with savings account totals and income estimates; An IRS form with taxpayer identification number; A completed Turbo Tax form with personal information filled in. The two have started The Cactus Project to help security specialists do similar research to help organizations tighten up the information they share over P2P. They list best-of-breed tools for conducting the research, including Mutella and the Gnutella Protocol on their site http://pauldotcom.com/cactusproject.html.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Bing","P2P","review","Security"],"title":"P2P research: clue needed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T01:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/real-life-mafia-wars-spy-eye-tool-kit-goes-after-zeus-botnet/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Peter Coogan at Symantec put up a very interesting blog post yesterday about a crimeware kit called SpyEye v1.0.7 (on sale now on Russian sites — $500) that has a module that will kill a Zeus bot infection on a victim’s computer so the bot created by SpyEye can take it over.\nIn September, Computer Weekly reported the Swedish telco Telia Sonera shut down the Internet connections of Latvian company Real Host after it was linked to the Zeus botnet. At the time, researchers said they believed Real Host’s servers had captured about 3.6 million PCs for the Zeus botnet.\n","tags":["alert","News","report","Security"],"title":"Real life Mafia Wars: Spy Eye tool kit goes after Zeus botnet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T01:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/social-media-expands-linkedin-hits-60m/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A new user in the Netherlands became the 60 millionth person to sign up with LinkedIn, the professional social networking site.\nFacebook says it has 400 million users of whom half log in every day.\nBoth are fabulous tools for communications and socializing, but making members’ identities and personal information so easily available carries some big risks. Our good friends at Sophos have pointed out that information can be harvested from LinkedIn for spear phishing. The site can contain enough information to be a virtual company directory.\n","tags":["News","Social Media"],"title":"Social media expands: LinkedIn hits 60M"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-13T01:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/13/social-networking-revolution-brewing-the-anti-villes/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" A lot of Facebook members are becoming fans of “I don’t care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia!!” This is basically a privacy issue I suppose.\nShortly after noon today there were about 4,000 Facebook members joining every 10 minutes!\nIf the surge continues it might become a Facebook denial-of-service issue! http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-dont-care-about-your-farm-or-your-fish-or-your-park-or-your-mafia/207382931457 The Wall Street Journal reported on this last night about 10 p.m. At that point they said 2,000 people were joining per minute. “Backlash Against Social Games Brews On Facebook”\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media"],"title":"Social networking revolution brewing: the anti-“villes”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T23:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/source-code-for-blackberry-and-iphone-spyware-published/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" At the BlackHat DC conference and SchmooCon, Nicolas Seriot, an independent researcher and Tyler Shields of Veracode have independently presented two very similar papers.\nThe papers analyse weaknesses in security and application delivery models for iPhone and Blackberry and provide interesting read, especially if you are looking to write the next spyware application or a bot for one of the platforms.\nFor me, the most interesting part of the papers is the one that shows that regardless of the implemented security mechanisms like data caging, providing applications with its own private storage, a third party application will be able to access a lot of potentially confidential data, like contact lists, sms and email storage and even the Blackberry’s microphone.\n","tags":["Apple","Mobile","News","Security"],"title":"Source code for Blackberry and iPhone spyware published"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T23:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/windows-7s-strange-battery-notification-isnt-any-error-but-a-feature/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Many users have complained about Windows 7 strange Battery notification saying “Consider replacing your Batteries” on Laptops and there was a noise about it in Blogosphere but Microsoft has replied to it. There were many Forum posts and blog articles implying Windows 7 is falsely reporting this situation or even worse, causing these batteries to fail.\nAfter upgrading to Windows 7, Many users are seeing a** pop-up window that suggests they “consider replacing” their battery**, as capacity has slipped below the 40 per cent level. Butt, official MSDN blog has confirmed that Windows 7 isn’t killing Laptop batteries or causing them to fail but it’s a new intelligent feature of Windows 7.\n","tags":["Microsoft","report","review"],"title":"Windows 7’s strange Battery Notification isn’t any error but a Feature"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T23:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/shorten-your-own-urls/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"“YOURLS is a small set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run your own URL shortening service (a la TinyURL). You can make it private or public, you can pick custom keyword URL. It comes with its own API.”\nhttp://yourls.org/\nIt’s installed on your web server (needs PHP 4.3 or better and MYSQL 4.1 with mod_rewrite enabled.)\n_“Benefits:\nNot reliant on third party service Sends link juice to your domain, not a service provider Customize your short links Build your brand (showing your URL)” Story here.\n","tags":["advice","News"],"title":"Shorten your own URLs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T23:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/top-4-most-annoying-facebook-couples/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"(CNN)(The Frisky) — For anyone who is remotely active on Facebook, you no doubt have been faced at some point with inane updates on one of your friend’s kid’s colds or how wedding-planning was coming along for one of your engaged buddies.\nThat’s why, when parenting Web site Babble published “Facebook’s Most Annoying Parents,” I immediately thought, “But what about all the annoying couples?” So, without further ado, I present to you the top four most annoying couples on Facebook.\n**\n**\nThe too-much-in-love couple\n","tags":["Facebook","News","review","Social Media"],"title":"Top 4 most annoying Facebook couples"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T22:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/escort-service-infected-with-trojjsredir-ar/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Clients of escorts and call girls are usually aware of the the risks presented from STIs. However, SophosLabs has been monitoring a different type of infection risk for clients of escorts in Indian cities.\nThe Troj/JSRedir-AR infection has morphed slightly:\nIf you look at the variable ‘o[e]‘ (two-thirds of the way down) you will see the beginnings of an obfuscated string ‘http://’. Previous versions of Troj/JSRedir-AK and Troj/JSRedir-AR have used non-alphanumeric characters to disguise the strings.\n","tags":["alert","hack","Malware","Phishing","Security"],"title":"Escort service infected with Troj/JSRedir-AR"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T22:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/facebook-chat-is-now-accessible-on-popular-instant-messaging-clients/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Making good on a promise delivered just about one year ago, Facebook announced that its popular chat feature can now be accessed through any Jabber (XMPP)-compatible desktop instant messaging software, including AIM, iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda, Trillian and…\nUsers can simply connect their Facebook account with their instant messaging client of choice and they can then chat with Facebook friends without having to stay logged into the social networking site.\nFurther, Facebook Chat has been integrated into the Facebook Connect platform for developers so other services wishing to integrate instant messaging into their sites.\n","tags":["Facebook","News","Social Media","Updates"],"title":"Facebook Chat is now accessible on popular instant messaging clients"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T22:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/winxp-users-hold-off-on-installing-ms010-15-bsod/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Security blogger Brian Krebs is reporting that some Windows XP users are reporting blue screen of death on reboot after installing Microsoft’s Tuesday patch KB977165 (MS010–15: “Vulnerabilities in Windows kernel could allow elevation of privilege.”)\n“Turns out, a non-trivial number of XP users are reporting that their systems suffer from the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) and fall into an interminable reboot loop after installing the latest batch of patches from Redmond,”\n","tags":["advice","alert","Microsoft","News","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"WinXP users: hold off on installing MS010–15 [BSOD]"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T22:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/new-rogue-securepcav/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SecurePcAv is a phony antivirus program that has been infecting PC’s across the interwebs in recent days.\nIf your PC is infected with SecurePcAv you will most likely experience the following:\nFake system scans that report numerous infections and refuses to remove the supposed infections until you buy the phony software. Alerts and warnings stating the PC is under attack or unprotected and recommends you buy the phony software. Other software will not work, when attempting to open programs a warning stating the program is infected appears and the software is closed. Web browser hijacking, redirecting the user to malicious websites or showing false security warnings on sites like Google.com. ","tags":["Hijack","Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: SecurePcAv"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T22:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/zeus-exploiting-spear-phishing-to-spear-phish/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Zeus crimeware family has moved into new territory with its latest spam campaign – purporting to be a warning about targeted phishing attacks on “.gov” and “.mil” domains, by Zeus Trojans no less!\nIn fact, one of the latest spam samples we’ve seen, duplicates the title and first three paragraphs of a blog entry by well-known security expert Brian Krebs, which discusses a previous iteration of this Zeus attack. As seen below, the spam sample starts off with the same three lines of the blog post, before starting into the phony KB content and links that lead to Zeus malware.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Zeus – Exploiting Spear Phishing to Spear Phish"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T21:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/new-rogue-paladin-antivirus/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Paladin Antivirus is a phony security program, designed to rip people off. Paladin Antivirus tricks people into thinking they are downloading a legit antivirus software, then continually displays false security alerts and warnings followed up with a requests for users to buy or register the software.\nOnce a computer becomes infected with Paladin Antivirus it will instantly begin a system scan and will report multiple infections. Paladin Antivirus will refuse to remove any of these supposed infections until the user buys or “registers” the software. Do not fall for this scam.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: Paladin Antivirus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T21:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/history-of-the-internet/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Have you ever wondered how Internet initiated 50 years ago in 1957? Below is a nice video which depicts how the Internet changed with respect to time in modern age. Must check it out!\nHope you liked watching this video!\n","tags":["Interesting","Video"],"title":"History of the Internet"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T21:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/new-google-chrome-beta-for-mac-gets-extensions/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Google launched the Mac version of its Chrome browser in Dec 2009. A new beta build is now available which offers new features like extensions, bookmark sync, and more.\nNow you’ll be able to install any of over 2,200 extensions currently available in Chrome’s extensions gallery. Extensions can add useful, informative,fun, or quirky functionality to your chrome browser. It also adds bookmark and cookie managers in a way that feels completely at home on the Mac\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"New Google Chrome Beta for Mac gets Extensions"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T21:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/the-buzz-is-getting-louder/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"It has been barely two days since Google announced their new social integration and messaging tool called Google Buzz. Today we saw the first example of malware, W32/Zuggie-A, pretending to be Google Buzz.\nAnalysis of W32/Zuggie-A gives the impression of a hastily assembled worm, really a modification of the W32/SillyFDC family of worms but with a twist.\nWhen W32/Zuggie-A is installed, it creates the following files:\nProgram Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\extensions{9CE11043-9A15-4207-A565-0C94C42D590D}\\chrome\\content\\timer.xul Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\extensions{9CE11043-9A15-4207-A565-0C94C42D590D}\\chrome.manifest Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\extensions{9CE11043-9A15-4207-A565-0C94C42D590D}\\install.rdf System\\googlebuzz.exe – copy of W32/Zuggie-A System\\GoogleUpte.exe – copy of W32/Zuggie-A W32/Zuggie-A modifies the registry to autostart GoogleUpte.exe and googlebuzz.exe.\nA quick search shows that the CLSID: 9CE11043-9A15-4207-A565-0C94C42D590D has previously been seen in multiple worms. This supports my theory that this is a hastily assembled worm built from recycled malware. I fired up a copy of Firefox on the infected machine and, as determined from analysis, found an installed Firefox extension called Firefox security 2.0 – Internal security options editor under the extensions tab of Firefox Add-ons.\nThis “security extension” has added a JavaScript (timer.xul), which is triggered when the browser queries: yahoo.com, bing.com, google.com, aol.com/aol/search, ask.com and executes JavaScript hosted on:\nsearchrequest1 . com / request . php ? aid = blackout\nwhich will silently click all Google or Yahoo Ads. displayed on the search results page (hey why not make a few bucks while infecting eh?).\nGoogle Buzz is new and is garnering quite a bit of interest and adoption among Internet users including myself. Clearly the malware authors view Google Buzz as the fresh big lucrative social fruit to exploit much like they have done with Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 and others. So in the coming weeks and months I predict we will see a host of new malware exploiting or attempting to exploit Google Buzz as the malware authors figure out its internals. This may have only been an exploratory attempt or a quick response to the latest craze – only time will tell.\n","tags":["alert","AOL","Bing","Firefox","Google","Google Chrome","Malware","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"The Buzz is getting LOUDER"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T20:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/between-a-poc-and-a-hard-place/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Several reports have been published detailing a Blackberry proof of concept (PoC) exploit called txsBBSpy that was recently presented at a security conference. Although it may not have been the aim of the original presenter, some reports have framed the PoC as being able to exploit so-called vulnerabilities that the writers believe to be present in the Blackberry platform. The “vulnerabilities” involve secretly forwarding incoming emails, locating devices by way of their GPS capabilities, eavesdropping on conversations by surreptitiously turning on microphones, and other such nefarious behavior.\n","tags":["Malware","Mobile","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Between a PoC and a Hard Place"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T20:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/interview-with-a-nigerian-419-scammer/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Bruce Schneier, in his blog Schneier on Security http://www.schneier.com/ drew attention to this great interview with an ex-Nigerian-419 scammer on the Scam-Detective site.\nIt’s a fairly long piece and gives a pretty good view of the Nigerian scam industry run by organized crime, how it sucks in young people who have good computer and English skills and pays them a huge amount of money ($75,000 per year in this case) to scam victims they view as white, greedy and rich.\n","tags":["advice","News","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Interview with a Nigerian 419 scammer"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T20:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/fake-av-talking-with-the-enemy/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Fake antivirus software (a.k.a misleading applications or rogue antivirus) is big business nowadays with Symantec reporting 43 million installation attempts from over 250 distinct programs between July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009. With fake AV software costing the victim anywhere from $30 to $100, this is a lucrative earner for criminals.\nOver time Symantec has observed various social engineering tactics being used to try and entice victims to hand over their money in this scam. The fake antivirus software known as Live PC Care has now gone as far as offering live online support to potential victims. Once a victim has installed Live PC Care onto their system via a system exploit or social engineering tactics, they are presented with the screen below falsely informing them that their system is riddled with viruses. Any suspicious computer user might wonder what this software is and where exactly it came from. To alleviate doubt and to aid with the whole scam, the designers of Live PC Care have added a yellow online support button in the top, right-hand corner of the fake AV software.\n","tags":["Malware","News","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Fake AV \u0026 Talking With The Enemy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T20:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/wi-fi-sensitivity-results-in-santa-fe-lawsuit/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"When you spend your day scouring the Internet (and my blog 😉) for news about computer security topics you cover a lot of territory. Once in a while you just have a weird day. You run into a lot of strange stuff. Today is one of those days.\nYahoo’s tech blog is carrying a story about a man in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who is suing because he has “electromagnetic sensitivity” and can’t live in his own home because of the radiation from his neighbor’s wi-fi network.\n","tags":["News","Yahoo"],"title":"Wi-Fi sensitivity results in Santa Fe lawsuit"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T20:25:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/new-rogue-advanced-defender/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Advanced Defender is fake security software that tricks people into thinking it’s legitimate antispyware software in hopes they will pay for the product.\nAdvanced Defender is a potentially dangerous and extremely frustrating PC infection that should be removed immediately. If Advanced Defender has infected your computer you may notice the following symptoms:\nSystem scans that report numerous infections, yet requires purchase of Advanced Defender before it will remove the infections (These are fictitious scan results) Alerts and Pop-Up system warnings stating the PC is infected and recommend purchase of Advanced Defender (These warnings are fake) Web browser redirecting to random websites (these websites are owned by cyber thieves and will further infect your PC) Advanced Defender will prevent other programs from opening, stating they are infected (The programs are not infected) ","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: Advanced Defender"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T17:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/a-perfect-valentines-day/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Planning a romantic Valentine’s Day for your loved one? Is there is no end to all that you can do to add even more sparkle this dreamy day? Perhaps a bottle of wine, flowers, or a lovely gift to impress him/her—and if you aren’t with anyone, there are even dating services available that provide you with options to meet a date.\nAs Dermot Harnett mentioned in A Brilliant Proposal: Stay Away from Valentine’s Day Spam!, for spammers, Valentine’s Day is a great target. We’ve observed several spam email message styles related to this upcoming event. Gift options, flower delivery, dating service, med spam to spice up your relationship, and much more.\nHere are some common header lines that Symantec has tracked relating to Valentine’s Day:\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"A Perfect Valentine’s Day"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-12T12:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/12/adobe-flash-player-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe has published a security bulletin about security vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player. In all versions up to the recent 10.0.42.34 Flash objects could evade the Sandbox which would allow for unauthorized cross domain requests. The vulnerability is rated critical. The updated version 10.0.45.2 as well of a fixed build of Adobe AIR 1.5.3.1930 is available in the flash download center and the air download center, respectively. Users should apply the update ASAP and administrators in companies should roll the fixed software out soon, too.\n","tags":["Adobe","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"Adobe Flash Player Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-11T23:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/11/google-to-buy-search-engine-aardvark/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" 🙂 (Mashable) — We’ve just confirmed with Google that the company has signed an agreement to acquire social search engine Aardvark.\nGoogle isn’t disclosing the terms, but news of the acquisition was first reported by TechCrunch, who put the figure at around $50 million. Google told us that it’s “signed an agreement to acquire Aardvark but don’t have any additional details to report at this time.”\nAardvark is a relatively new startup from former Googlers that uses social distribution channels to get immediate answers to your questions.\n","tags":["Google","News"],"title":"Google to buy search engine Aardvark"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-11T20:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/11/take-care-before-valentine-cupid-struck/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s just a few more days before Valentine’s Day. As most people now are already preparing their celebration, malware authors are also getting ready to use this popular event to target users with their malicious intent.\nHere’s one example of a malicious file (2077ed17f0ad92dafb8fb7601570e06580e4b7f1) we’ve seen recently:\nUpon execution, it drops the following picture file greeting:\nNote: It seems that the malware writers are using valid images from legitimate Web sites.\n","tags":["Malware","scam","Security"],"title":"Take Care Before Valentine: Cupid Struck"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-11T19:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/11/rogue-trying-to-look-like-avira-anti-virus/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Jerome Segura at ParetoLogic blogged about this yesterday: a rogue security product with a web page that tries to imitate that of the German AV company Avira (check out the red umbrella and the type face.)\nHmmm. If this company has been providing “20 Years of Total Protection” how come its web site was just registered last year and why was it registered by a proxy service?\nThe fake:\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Rogue trying to look like Avira anti-virus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-11T18:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/11/security-chip-that-does-encryption-in-pcs-hacked/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"SAN FRANCISCO – Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist has devised a way to break those locks.\nThe attack can force heavily secured computers to spill documents that likely were presumed to be safe. This discovery shows one way that spies and other richly financed attackers can acquire military and trade secrets, and comes as worries about state-sponsored computer espionage intensify, underscored by recent hacking attacks on Google Inc.\n","tags":["alert","News","Security"],"title":"Security chip that does encryption in PCs hacked"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-11T16:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/11/google-chrome-stable-channel-update-2/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Google Chrome stable channel has been updated to 4.0.249.89 for Windows.\nSecurity Fixes and rewards:\nPlease see the Chromium security page for more detail. Note that the referenced bugs may be kept private until a majority of our users are up to date with the fix.\nCongratulations to Timothy D. Morgan on receiving a Chromium Security Reward for bug 32718. Note that Timothy elected to donate the reward to the Haiti relief effort, so Google raised the donation to $1337.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","This Blog Update","Updates"],"title":"Google Chrome Stable Channel Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-08T14:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/08/new-rogue-safepcav/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The creators behind the rogue antispyware appliaction WiniGuard have released yet another clone of their software. This one is called SafePcAV.\nSafePcAV spreads by showing fake online scanners. Once installed it will show hundreds of false infections. To remove these infections it requires the user to pay and license the software.\nIf your computer is infected with this you must remove it soon, Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: SafePcAV"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-08T14:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/08/fix-resuming-problem-after-sleep-mode-in-vista-and-windows-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Putting laptop in sleep mode is a common thing that we do to save power and perform our work at a later stage without much delay. But for some users there is a problem while they try to resume from sleep mode.\nAs the resuming begins, a blank screen appears with a mouse pointer and stays until you press any key or click the mouse. This problem may be fixed by a HotFix named KB958685 released by Microsoft for Vista and Windows7 users and should be only used if you are facing this problem.\n","tags":["advice","Microsoft","solution"],"title":"Fix Resuming problem after Sleep mode in Vista and Windows 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-08T00:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/08/phishing-using-pornographic-content-as-bait/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec has observed a new trend in phishing in which the phishing Web page contains pornographic content. The phishing site states that the end user can obtain free pornography after logging in or signing up. These offers tempt users into entering their credentials in the hopes of obtaining pornography.\nThe attackers use several offers of pornography as bait. Some of the offers are adult chat, social networking with adult personals for sexual favors, blogs with free pornography, and so on. The screenshot below is an example of a phishing website using a leading information services brand. The site states that they provide email alerts for sex parties:\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Phishing Using Pornographic Content as Bait"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T23:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/phony-firefox-update-comes-with-hotbar-adware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Our good friends at Broomfield, Colo., security firm eSoft have found an interesting scam to trick Internet users into installing the Hotbar adware: a fake Firefox download site.\nThe eSoft researchers are theorizing that an affiliate of Pinball Publisher Network (PPB). is responsible. Pinball bought the Zango assets after that pestilent operation failed last spring.\nHowever Sunbelt Software Spyware Research Manager Eric Howes did some more digging and found that PPN offers the download file on a site they own so affiliates can send customers victims there for downloads.\n","tags":["alert","Firefox","Malware","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Phony Firefox update comes with Hotbar adware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T22:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/microsoft-updates-february-9th/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"February 9th will bring numerous Microsoft Updates, 13 bulletins addressing 26 vulnerabilities.\nAll versions of Windows are affected.\nLooks like a busy Tuesday is ahead.\nSee Microsoft’s Security Bulletin Advance Notification for February 2010 for additional details.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"Microsoft Updates, February 9th"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T21:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/new-ie-information-disclosure-advisory/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has announced in Advisory (980088) that there has been a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer, versions 5 through 8. Users not running Internet Explorer in Protected Mode are at risk of having information, in files with predictable names, accessed by attackers. This vulnerability cannot be exploited to execute remote code or used for a denial-of-service attack.\nThe largest group of users at risk are Windows XP users running IE without Protected Mode enabled. Internet Explorer on Vista and Windows 7 has Protected Mode enabled by default.\n","tags":["alert","Internet Explorer","Microsoft","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"New IE Information Disclosure Advisory…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T21:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/spammers-dangle-ipad-carrot/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"New, shiny products always tend to catch people’s attention, and spammers are continually looking for ways to do exactly that. So it’s not surprising to see spam tempting people with the promise of a new iPad, and a FREE one at that:\nThe image they’ve used is very sketchy too, patched together from other existing Apple products and bearing little resemblance to the pictures released so far.\nHowever much you might want an iPad, don’t get lured in by spam like this.\n","tags":["Apple","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Spammers dangle iPad carrot"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T20:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/download-official-valentine-theme-for-windows-7/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Valentines Day is coming and people are getting ready with preparation and plans to gift some thing different to their loved ones. In this race how can Windows stay behind? So it has released an official Valentine theme to change you desktop to a festive mood. Here is a screen shot of this theme.\nYou do not need any other modification to install this theme as it is not a third party theme. This theme also includes complete sound pack, to move you with the rhythm. Just download the theme and double click it.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Updates","Valentine"],"title":"Download Official Valentine Theme for Windows 7"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T18:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/youd-think-a-company-pursuing-an-ipo-in-this-economy-would-clean-upits-act/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"You’d think that a company trying to raise several hundred million with an initial public offering of stock would tell their affiliates to be on their best behavior for a while.\nFor example, maybe they’d discourage them from hacking government web sites to attract search engine hits on the word “bestiality,” then redirect browsers to the company’s site.\nThe sites:\nThe code:\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"You’d think a company pursuing an IPO in this economy would clean upits act"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T18:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/major-u-s-crackdown-on-work-at-home-fraud-coming/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today announced that next Tuesday they will hold a news conference to make public details of “a law enforcement sweep cracking down on job and work-at-home fraud fueled by the economic downturn.”\nThe media advisory said that the news conference would feature the director of the FTC’s bureau of Consumer Protection David C. Vladeck, an assistant attorney general and the Ohio Attorney General. The advisory listed as “also attending” representatives of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Monster.com and Microsoft.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Major U.S. crackdown on work-at-home fraud coming?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-07T18:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/07/job-opportunity-without-a-single-name/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Today we received some job hiring emails that looked like this:\nIt has been formatted nicely and appears to have come from a large job search website.\nThe message reads as follows:\nDear Job Seeker,\nUpon reviewing your resume on Careerbuilder.com we have decided to offer you a job opportunity with our company. The job position is for a Payment Manager/Payments Processor in your area with no obligation to relocate.\n","tags":["AOL","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Job opportunity without a single name"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-05T23:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/05/phishing-scam-steals-carbon-credits/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Wired magazine has run a story on a phishing scam in Europe, New Zealand and Japan that resulted in the loss of 250,000 carbon credit permits worth $4 million from six companies.\nThe phishing emails spoofed the German Emissions Trading Authority and said that the victim companies needed to re-register their accounts with the authority. When victims entered their information on a fraudulent web page from the link in the phishing emails the scammers accessed their accounts, transferred emissions credits to accounts they controlled then sold them. The amount the scammers made hasn’t been disclosed.\n","tags":["Phishing","report","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Phishing scam steals carbon credits"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-05T23:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/05/new-facebook-home-page-important-new-privacy-setting/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook started rolling out a new home page and navigation menus earlier today.\nAnd whenever Facebook adds new features, in this case the Applications and Games dashboards, there’s usually a new privacy setting as well.\nThis is what part of the new Applications dashboard looks like.\nAll Facebook has raised some privacy concerns regarding the dashboard’s output.\nDo you really want all of your “friends” to know what applications you’ve been running?\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","privacy","Social Media","Security"],"title":"New Facebook Home Page, Important New Privacy Setting"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-05T22:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/05/it-looks-like-a-phish-but-isnt/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"This is really bad for so many reasons. It certainly doesn’t help their security.\nAnd yes, it’s completely legitimate.\n","tags":["Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"It looks like a phish but isn't"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-05T22:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/05/trojan-code-sneaks-into-two-mozilla-add-ons/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mozilla yesterday posted a notice on its AMO blog (that’s an acronym for their add-on site addons.mozilla.org) that two add-ons have been found infected with Trojan code: Sothink Web Video Downloader v. 4.0 and all versions of Master Filer.\nVersion 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader contained Win32.LdPinch.gen and Master Filer contained Win32.Bifrose. According to the blog, Masterfiler was downloaded 600 times before it was removed from the site Jan. 25 and Sothink was downloaded more than 4,000 times before it was removed Feb. 2.\n","tags":["alert","Firefox","Malware","Mozilla","Security"],"title":"Trojan code sneaks into two Mozilla add-ons"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-04T17:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/04/its-lame-ransomware-but-it-could-fool-somebody/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Found this little gem today. It’s distributed with other malware, cracks and drive-by downloads. It purports to be a security warning from your Windows operating system.\nNotice the “Visa, MasterCard, etc” – it doesn’t even bother to list all the cards it accepts.\nThe really cool thing about it is that it takes FAKE credit card numbers as well as real ones!\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"It’s lame ransomware, but it could fool somebody"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-04T17:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/04/using-google-images-to-investigate-fraud/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sami, one of our test engineers, was recently seeking a Play Station 3.\nHe found this offer at Huuto.net, a Finnish auction site.\n160€ for a 60GB unit, with games, not bad. Sami wanted to confirm that the seller was legit, so he requested a picture, and received this.\nWhen he examined the image properties, he discovered that the picture was taken in 2008.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Using Google Images to Investigate Fraud"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-04T01:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/04/anatomy-of-a-free-starbucks-gift-card-scam/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"With virus and spam outbreaks, analysts needs to keep their nerves to analyze the situation and proceed to deal with the new threat. So, I wasn’t expected to be surprised by my friends’ actions on facebook this past weekend.\nIt started innocently enough, as a post about getting a Free $25 Starbucks gift card for joining a particular group. The first person to join the group from my friends list happens to work for a non-profit organization helping young people. So, I expected the young people on his “friends list” to join this group shortly.\n","tags":["Facebook","Malware","Phishing","scam","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Anatomy of a free Starbucks gift card scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-04T00:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/04/google-shows-off-chrome-os-tablet-ideas/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" (CNET) — Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple’s iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS.\nOn Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google’s Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, “Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed.”\nThe site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS.\n“While its primary focus is Netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power,” according to the Chromium form factors site. Chromium is the name of the open-source developer project that underlies the branded Chrome product.\nIt’s possible that Chrome OS could be an easier sell on tablets than on Netbooks, the class of device on which Google said it plans to launch Chrome OS. Netbooks often are used as general-purpose PCs, so the browser-based philosophy of Chrome OS is a more jarring transition.\nToday’s tablets, in contrast, tend to focus more on a collection of specialized uses such as reading books, surfing the Net, and chores that only require light typing. With that approach, Chrome OS’ break from the PC world could be less jarring. The tablet market isn’t as big as the Netbook market, though.\nThe ideas are only mock-ups, but Google has established itself as a real if not dominant force in the computing industry. Its Android mobile-phone operating system is increasingly influential, and its Chrome browser continues to steadily grow in usage.\nThe tablet mock-ups show a variety of Chrome OS tablet ideas, including a virtual keyboard taking up the bottom half of the screen or detached and floating as a separate window. Also included are a slideshow mode, an application launcher, sidebar-mounted browser tabs, and a pop-up contextual menu.\nThe video mock-up shows a much larger tablet, with hands resizing and moving windows through the multitouch interface, scrolling through text, and typing a search query.\nIt’s all very rough at this stage, but none of it is too remote from a multitouch-enabled version of the Chrome OS. Google plans to debut Chrome OS in Netbooks later this year, and development of the open-source operating system is well under way.\nIn a statement, Google didn’t share any specifics about its plans: “Google Chrome OS is still in development, and we are constantly experimenting with various user interfaces to determine what designs would produce the best user experience. As we’ve said all along, the UI is still under development and will continue to evolve as we determine which designs work best for our users.”\nComputing companies have been trying to make tablets for years, with little success. Apple hopes its design will change that with its iPad selling from $499 to $829. It’s more of an iPhone with a large screen than a MacBook with no keyboard.\nGoogle is taking a different approach with Chrome OS. Instead of programs running straight on the computer’s hardware and its underlying Linux operating system, Chrome OS applications run directly in the browser.\nWhat’s similar to the iPad, though, is that both have somewhat of an applications head start compared with a computing platform that’s starting from scratch: the iPad can run existing iPhone apps, and Chrome OS can run existing Web applications such as Google Docs.\nOne thing that’s changed since early tablet years is the arrival of e-book readers as a real phenomenon. Amazon’s Kindle is the most notable example, but there are others, and Apple touted book reading with the iPad. Google, it should be noted, has a conduit to millions of books via its Google Books service.\nGiven that Apple chose to use a variation of its iPhone OS for the iPad, it’s interesting but not terribly surprising that Google chose to use Chrome OS rather than its phone operating system, Android. In the big picture, Google clearly hopes the browser will be the foundation for applications, letting them run more easily on a multitude of devices.\nAndroid uses a variation of Oracle’s Java technology as a program foundation. Perhaps ironically, Java was launched with the motto for programmers of “write once, run anywhere,” and it is that vision Google is trying to realize with Web applications.\n","tags":["Android","Apple","Google","Google Chrome","News"],"title":"Google shows off Chrome OS tablet ideas"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-04T00:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/04/utorrent-2-0-stable-version-released/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" After lots of Beta and RC releases, uTorrent, the most popular and lightweight BitTorrent client has now been updated to ver. 2.0 which is the final stable release. The user interface has also improved with a set of new icons.\nRelease Notes:\nAdded UDP tracker support! uTP has been improved significantly 1.8.5, with many bugs fixed and performance improvements. It can be found in the preferences as “Enable bandwidth management” (but don’t worry, you can still control caps!). The setup dialog has been overhauled to make it much easier to use and with a built-in speed test. More presets were added and it automatically scales settings for high-upload connections. A new transfer cap feature has been added to track bandwidth usage, along with graphs to show your usage. Note – The program asks you to install Ask Toolbar which you can ignore during installation.\n","tags":["Updates"],"title":"µTorrent 2.0 Stable version Released !"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-04T00:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/04/microsoft-support-informs-you/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Since yesterday, our lab has detected a flood of email messages that seem to contain a Microsoft Update, but it’s actually malware. We’ve seen around 3,000 in a few hours.\nThe message is like the following:\nThis email, which seems to have been sent by the Microsoft Support team, informs you that a new security update for Outlook/Outlook Express has been released. It’s a critical update, so it’s better to install it as soon as possible.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Microsoft Support informs you…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-02T22:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/02/hackers-disrupt-european-co2-market/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In recent weeks, various cybercrime attacks have disrupted the computer systems that allow nations to manage their national greenhouse-gas emissions quotas and their possession of carbon assets according to international agreements (the Kyoto Protocol and the European system). One quota is the right to emit the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide during a specified period.\nThe initial attack targeted the Danish CO₂ quota register that was shut down on January 12. The Danish authorities took this decision after registry users received a fake email purporting to originate from the Danish Energy Agency and redirecting the recipients to a mirror site to steal their credentials.\n","tags":["alert","hack","report","Security"],"title":"Hackers Disrupt European CO₂ Market"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-02T21:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/02/protecting-privacy-by-design/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Last week I revealed troubling transmissions by the Google Toolbar: Even when a user specifically “disable[s]” the Google Toolbar, and even when the Toolbar disappears from view, the Toolbar continues tracking users online behavior—including specific web pages visited and specific searches run on other search engines. To Google’s credit, after I posted my article Google promptly fixed these nonconsensual transmissions—but big questions remain. How did this bug slip through Google’s internal testing? What happens to the data Google collected without user consent? And why was Google collecting this data in the first place?\n","tags":["advice","Google","review"],"title":"Protecting Privacy by Design"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-01T23:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/01/beware-of-skype-phishing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We were made aware that phishing for Skype credentials is currently taking place. The link the phishing mails direct to are dangerous – they aren’t detected by any phishing filter of the popular browsers yet.\nOne thing caught my attention. Modern browsers should support domain highlighting so that the real domain is visible when someone surfs the Internet. Like Internet Explorer 8 properly does:\nThere you can clearly see that you are not on the Skype website, but on another domain.\n","tags":["Bing","Google Chrome","Phishing","scam","Skype","spam","Security"],"title":"Beware of Skype Phishing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-02-01T23:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/01/new-rogue-mypcsecure/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"MyPcSecure is the latest rogue anti-spyware application and a clone from the WiniGuard family.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: MyPcSecure"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2010-02-01T14:01:51Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/02/01/bt-released-these-hopeful-machines/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"BT Released “These Hopeful Machines” in 2 Discs.\nThese Hopeful Machines is the Grammy-nominated sixth studio album by American electronic musician BT. Released on February 1, 2010, the album sees collaborations with the likes of JES, Rob Dickinson, Christian Burns and Kirsty Hawkshaw, also featuring a cover of “The Ghost in You” by The Psychedelic Furs. While some of the songs go beyond 10 minutes in length, the album spans two discs with six tracks on each. In an effort to make the album more accessible to casual listeners, the record was eventually re-issued as a single-disc version with shorter tracks, titled These Humble Machines. In addition, the album would later spawn a double disc remix edition titled These Re-Imagined Machines, also featured as a “Limited Collector’s Edition Box Set”. With great reception from the critics, the album was nominated for the 2011 Grammy Awards under Best Electronic/Dance Album.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"BT Released “These Hopeful Machines”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-27T20:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/27/new-rogue-liveenterprisesuite/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"LiveEnterpriseSuite is a clone of InternetAntivirusPRO. Actually, the only thing that the authors of this rogue have changed is the name in the GUI.\nLiveEnterpriseSuite will detect false infections and require a license to remove them.\nIf your computer is infected with this malware, you should remove it soon, Click Here to learn how to remove such malwares.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: LiveEnterpriseSuite"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-27T19:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/27/google-media-player-under-development/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Google has confirmed that it’s future operating system Chrome OS will have an integrated media player that will offer basic codec support , so that users can directly play audio or video files from Gmail or from USB drives or other media devices.\nIn an interview with Ars Technica, Matthew Papakipos, the lead engineering director for the Chrome OS project, shared that Chrome OS will have a complete media player that approximates the functionality of Windows Media Player.\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","News"],"title":"Google Media Player under development"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-27T19:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/27/google-chrome-4-now-with-extensions-take-care/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"With the latest release of their browser, v.4.0, Google has published a long expected feature: Browser Extensions. Now Chrome features what other browsers like Firefox, IE, Opera and so on offer for a long time already.\nBut, being able to compete with the others better doesn’t mean that they have solved all problems. Actually, their problems just start to appear – because adding extensions in the browser is just the same as opening Pandora’s box.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Google","Google Chrome","Security"],"title":"Google Chrome 4 – now with Extensions, Take Care!!!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-27T19:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/27/loose-tweets-sink-fleets/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Information leakage is a real problem.\nIt’s especially bad for high-security organizations, like military agencies.\nAnd it’s now harder than ever, thanks to services such as Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.\nSo, we worked together with Lewis Communications to submit a Freedom Of Information Act request to Ministry of Defence in UK, asking if they’ve had problems with this.\nAfter waiting some weeks, we got a reply back, detailing that UK military personnel and Ministry of Defence staff have leaked secret information 16 times on social networking websites and Internet forums.\n","tags":["hack","privacy","Social Media","Security"],"title":"Loose Tweets Sink Fleets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-27T19:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/27/local-trends-comes-to-twitter/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The most popular micro blogging network ‘Twitter’ has now added local trends support. This new feature allows users to track Trending topics on twitter related to their region. Though, currently very less number of countries and cities added to it.\nIn twitter words:\nLocal Trends will allow you to learn more about the nuances in our world and discover even more relevant topics that might matter to you. We’ll be improving this feature over time to provide more locations, languages, and data through our API.\n","tags":["News","Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Local Trends comes to Twitter"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-27T18:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/27/ms-office-2010-rtm-final-build-14-0-4734-1000-escrow-release/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft Corporation has almost started assembling the final build of Office 2010 aka (MS office 14) RTM version. As per the news leaked on Wzor, Development of OFFICE 2010 software package has come to its last stage.The build is codenamed as Escrow with build number 14.0.4734.1000\nAccording to Wzor, This RTM Escrow Build 14.0.4734.1000 has already been circulated within Corporation and is available to company employees and partners. Few days before, when Build 14.0.4730.1007 was leaked on Torrent network, its EULA (License Agreement) read that its a RTM version but apparently it was just a Pre RTM build. Testers are still working on it and if there no problems, it will move to RTM version.\n","tags":["Microsoft","News","Updates"],"title":"MS Office 2010 RTM Final Build 14.0.4734.1000 Escrow Release"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T22:37:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/trojjsredir-ak-40-of-a-months-malware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It has been a month since Sophos added detection for Troj/JSRedir-AK and figures generated today show that over 40% of all web-based detections have been from this malicious code.\n[Graph shows Malware hosted on websites from 2009-12-22 11:00:00 to 2010-01-21 11:00:00 (GMT-8)]\nTranslating the numbers into a more human comprehensible form: 1 site every 15 secs was being detected as Troj/JSRedir-AK.\nThe affected sites include well-known names, including:\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Troj/JSRedir-AK: 40% of a month’s malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T22:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/new-rogue-apcsafe/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"APcSafe is another rogue anti-spyware clone of the WiniGuard family.\nif your computer is infected with this malware you should remove it soon.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: APcSafe"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T22:16:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/new-rogue-pcssecure/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"PcsSecure is the latest cloned rogue antispyware from the WiniGuard family.\nif your computer is infected with this malware you should remove it soon.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New Rogue: PcsSecure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T22:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/google-chrome-stable-channel-update-3/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The stable channel has been updated to 4.0.249.78 for Windows, and includes the following features and security fixes (since 3.0):\nExtensions Bookmark sync Enhanced developer tools HTML5: Notifications, Web Database, Local Storage, WebSockets, Ruby support v8 performance improvements Skia performance improvements Full ACID3 pass, due to re-enabled remote font support (with added defense against bugs in operating system font libraries) HTTP byte range support New security feature: “Strict Transport Security” support Experimental new anti-reflected-XSS feature called “XSS Auditor” Security Fixes:\n","tags":["Google","Google Chrome","Updates"],"title":"Google Chrome Stable Channel Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T22:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/google-toolbar-tracks-searches-after-its-disabled/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Ben Edelman, Harvard privacy researcher and guru has revisited the features of Google Toolbar and was appalled to discover that disabling it doesn’t really disable it. He is recommending that all users uninstall it.\nIn a long, thorough and well-written piece on his blog Edelman discusses how he monitored the Toolbar’s behavior with a network sniffer and documented the transmission of data back to Google (to toolbarqueries.google.com). Not only does it track a user’s Google searches, but it also phones home information about searches done in other search engines.\n","tags":["advice","Google Chrome","report","review"],"title":"Google Toolbar tracks searches after it’s disabled."},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T22:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/virus-writers-produce-hardware-damaging-code-with-win32-worm-zimuse/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Disguised IQ test combines virus, rootkit and worm — malicious code for one fatal formula\nBitDefender today identified a new e-threat that combines the destructive behavior of a virus with the spreading mechanisms of a worm. There are two known variants of this virus, which enters the computer as a harmless IQ test.\nOnce executed, the worm creates between seven and eleven copies of itself (depending on the variant) in critical areas of the Windows system.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Security"],"title":"Virus Writers Produce Hardware Damaging Code with Win32.Worm.Zimuse"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T00:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/desktop-security-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Desktop Security 2010 is a rogue antispyware program, designed to trick people into thinking it is a legitimate program. Desktop Security 2010 uses fake security warnings and system scans to frighten people into buying the software. If Desktop Security 2010 is installed on your PC, you should remove it immediately as it is a potentially dangerous computer infection.\nComputers that have been infected with Desktop Security 2010 may show the following symptoms:\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Desktop Security 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-25T00:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/25/hotmail-password-phishing-again/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I am a very lucky guy.\nIn fact, I must be the luckiest person in the world since spammers like to send all kinds of lucky spam to me.\nThese days, I get inundated with lucky spam. The last spam I had, I got offered a free gift card if I purchased some Viagra from them. Wow.\nOn other days, asking me to lose my weight results in instant chances of winning a lottery at the same time and all of this is due to my lucky email address.\n","tags":["alert","Microsoft","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Hotmail password phishing again"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-24T23:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/24/adobe-flash-10-1-will-get-private-browsing-mode/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Adobe Flash is a well well known plugin used today by most of the internet users. Its next upgrade i.e version 10.1 will get private browsing support. Flash player will now automatically clean all flash history of your computer once you end the session. It will use the same technique as used in browsers supporting private browsing.\nAs you end the session the browsers in private mode automatically clears cookies, history and data, similarly flash will also remove any user password, login information or data stored that were associated while working in flash environment.\n","tags":["Adobe","Google Chrome","News"],"title":"Adobe Flash 10.1 Will Get Private Browsing Mode"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T23:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/nude-pictures-of-senator-scott-brown-arouse-new-virus-concerns/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"False images from Cosmopolitan infect computers with fake antivirus product\nBitDefender today warned of a new threat following the flood of interest in the result of the January 19th Massachusetts elections.\nThe day after his winning Senate campaign, nude pictures of Cosmopolitan’s Sexiest Man of 1982 Scott Brown not only stirred women’s imaginations, but also got the interest of malware creators. The latter exploited the news to spread a fake antivirus: Trojan.FakeAV.XP. Instead of spicy pictures, the targeted user received messages of false infections on their computer and prompts to buy a fake antivirus product.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Nude Pictures of Senator Scott Brown Arouse New Virus Concerns"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T20:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/404-error-message-spoof/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Some questionable sites associated with the Winigard family of rogue security products pulls it from this location, which appears to belong to a graphic designer in Canada.\nIt’s funny and here’s waaaay too much truth there:\n","tags":["alert","News","Security"],"title":"404 error message spoof"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T18:22:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/smutty-searches-scuppered/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Symantec Security Response has repeatedly warned that looking for free movies and videos online often results in malware infection, and here we go again with yet another example. We recently became aware of a campaign, centered around the YouTube Web site, to trick users into following malicious links.\nYouTube is one of the most popular video sharing sites and therefore is often picked by online criminals hoping for an easy catch. Performing a search using a (generally female) celebrity’s name followed by “sex tape” or a recent movie name yields results such as the following:\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","YouTube","Security"],"title":"Smutty Searches Scuppered"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T11:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/iphish-fake-iphone-warranty-steals-info/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This week we’ve seen a spam campaign aimed at separating unsuspecting users from their iPhone details.\nMessages have the subject “IMPORTANT: Your iPhone Warranty Extension for 1 Year!”, pretend to be sent from “iphonewarranty@apple.com”, and look as follows (click to enlarge the image):\nRecipients who feel like they can’t let this limited-time too-good-to-be-true special offer pass them by will find themselves redirected to the following page:\n","tags":["alert","Apple","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"iPhish – fake iPhone warranty steals info"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T11:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/now-you-too-can-mount-your-own-operation-aurora-attacks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"But don’t. Please don’t!… just…. don’t!…\nInstead, why don’t you apply the out-of-band patch ( MS10-002 ) that Microsoft has just released…?!!!\nPatching remote-code-execution vulnerabilities is usually “a good idea” to say the least. But, considering that:\nMicrosoft rushed to get this patch out…… ( Thank you Microsoft! )\nAnd that, this patch addresses several Internet Explorer vulnerabilities – of which includes CVE-2010-0249 – the infamous “Aurora attacks” related vulnerability that’s well known to be making the rounds in the wild.\n","tags":["alert","Microsoft","Updates","Security"],"title":"Now you too can mount your own Operation Aurora Attacks!!!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T11:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/salesmen-are-not-my-friends/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I dislike salesmen. The look on their faces irks me when I can feel the dollars flicking in their eyes. I hate it when my car insurance company ask if i want to get home insurance as well. I do not like it when my credit card company tries to sell me a great new insurance product. In general, I hate to be a victim of cross selling.\nMalware authors are just like salesmen. They cross-sell as well. A fake AV tried to do the same to me. Besides offering great AV protection, it wants me to get some useful codecs so that I can watch all my legit DVDrips. Thus, someone decided that in order to get me to install their codecs, he/she will have to terminate all processes related to media players.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Security"],"title":"Salesmen Are Not My Friends"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T10:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/apcsecure/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"APcSecure is a new rogue from the WiniGuard clone factory.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"APcSecure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-22T00:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/22/dirty-jokes-by-mobile-phone/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The Danwei web site (Chinese media, advertising, and urban life) is carrying a rippingly funny blog piece by Alice Xin Liu about a recent Chinese government program that would have China Mobile monitor mobile telephone text transmissions for conversations of a sexual nature. Offenders’ (messaging) service would be cut off until they wrote a “self-criticism.”\nXin Lilu said bloggers in China are having a ball with the idea that the government is trying to censor dirty jokes, which apparently are a significant part of the culture of Chinese people (as if they were any different than the rest of us).\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Dirty jokes by mobile phone"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/uk-telecom-giant-virgin-media-monitoring-customers-file-sharing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Virgin Media, the UK telecommunications giant that supplies TV, phone and Internet services, has begun to use deep packet inspection determine if its Internet customers are sharing music or films.\nThe monitoring system will check transmitted data against a database of copyrighted music and video to spot illegal file sharing.\nVirgin Media said the system isn’t keeping track of IP addresses of the transmissions and the technology isn’t designed to catch illegal downloaders, but it could.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"UK telecom giant Virgin Media monitoring customers’ file sharing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/report-from-europe-95-percent-of-email-is-spam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has released a report that says 95 percent of all email is now spam.\nThe report was based on surveying last year of email traffic by about 100 service providers in 30 countries.\nENISA Executive Director Dr. Udo Helmbrecht said:\n“Spam remains an unnecessary, time consuming and costly burden for Europe. Given the number of spam messages observed, I can only conclude more dedicated efforts must be undertaken.\n_\n_\n“Email providers should be better at monitoring spam and identifying the source. Policy-makers and regulatory authorities should clarify the conflicts between spam-filtering, privacy, and obligation to deliver.”\n","tags":["report","spam","Security"],"title":"Report from Europe: 95 percent of email is spam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/system-defender/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"System Defender is a rogue antispyware program, or a PC infection made to look like real security software. System Defender is a scam designed to trick people out of their money.\nIf your PC has been infected with System Defender, you will most likely experience the following symptoms:\nSystem scans that report numerous infections, yet requires purchase of System Defender before it will remove the infections (These are fictitious scan results) Alerts and Pop-Up system warnings stating the PC is infected and recommend purchase of System Defender (These warnings are fake) Web browser redirecting to random websites (these websites are owned by cyber thieves and will further infect your PC) System Defender will prevent other programs from opening, stating they are infected (The programs are not infected) System Defender is a very serious computer infection and should be removed from infected machines immediately.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"System Defender"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/protectsoldier/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ProtectSoldier is the latest rogue antispyware program released by cyber thieves to terrorize PC users.\nProtectSoldier is phony security program that trick people into buying the software with false security warnings and system scans. By displaying false system warnings, pop-up alerts warning of infections, and system scans that state the PC has numerous infections, cyber thieves rip people off by demanding the user buy the program to remove the supposed infections.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"ProtectSoldier"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/armordefender/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ArmorDefender is the latest rogue antispyware program released by cyber thieves to terrorize PC users.\nArmorDefender is phony security program that trick people into buying the software with false security warnings and system scans. By displaying false system warnings, pop-up alerts warning of infections, and system scans that state the PC has numerous infections, cyber thieves rip people off by demanding the user buy the program to remove the supposed infections.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"ArmorDefender"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/antivirus360/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Antivirus360 is a phony antivirus program, designed to rip people off. Cyber thieves who created phony software like Antivirus360 use scare tactics to frighten people into buying the software.\nAntivirus360 will show false security warnings and scan results stating the PC is infected and request payment for the software to remove the supposed infections. Antivirus360 is a complete scam and a potentially very dangerous PC infection that should be remove from infected computers.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Antivirus360"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/charities-fight-for-piece-of-5-million-prize-on-facebook/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":" (CNN) — This week, 100 charities are battling for votes on Facebook to win $1 million.\nThe competition is a new approach to philanthropic giving and is led by JPMorgan Chase, which throughout the competition will donate a total of $5 million to 100 charities chosen by Facebook users.\nTraditionally, organizations would go through a grant process, and Chase would choose who would get its money and how much. However, late last year, Chase decided to take a different approach and put the power of choosing charities into the hands of Americans.\nChase took a database filled with 500,000 nonprofit organizations and uploaded the information on to Facebook. The bank then allowed “crowdsourcing” to choose which charities should be recognized.\nThe top 100 charities won $25,000 and advanced to the second round, where another vote will determine which organization will win $1 million. The five runners-up in the second round will receive $100,000 each.\nAnother $1 million will be given to a single charity chosen from the original group by a Chase board of directors set up to oversee this competition.\nThe concept of crowdsourcing corporate giving via online communities and voting was first used by American Express in 2007. In the Members Project, American Express would donate $5 million to charities submitted and selected by card members.\nBut Chase has taken a huge leap by moving the entire competition to Facebook.\n“We wanted to find a way where we could hear from the communities we were operating in and hear what was important to them,” said Chase Community Giving foundation President Kim Davis.\nThe philanthropic arm of the large bank donates annually $100 million to organizations around the world, Davis said. “This, for us, is very much about testing out a new way of doing corporate philanthropy for the firm.”\nMore than a million fans have participated in the Facebook program.\nAlong the way, obscure charities have joined better-known ones near the top of the rankings.\nBecause the winners of the first round worked hard to organize their online communities, smaller charities with get-out-the-vote passion were able to compete with larger organizations.\nThus, the final 100 charities range from the large Susan G. Komen for the Cure (which claims on its Web site to be the “world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists”) to the Feel Your Boobies foundation, started by a woman in her garage, who wants to increase awareness of breast cancer screenings in young women.\nAs of midday Thursday, the top vote-getting charity on the contest’s Facebook page was Invisible Children Inc., a nonprofit that seeks to combat child-related violence in Africa through documentary storytelling.\nOther companies are starting to pick up on crowdsourcing corporate philanthropy.\n","tags":["Facebook","News"],"title":"Charities fight for piece of $5 million prize on Facebook"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T22:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/aurora-update-brief-dos/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Early this afternoon Microsoft released an out-of-band security bulletin patching the vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The fix has been at the top of the news since the vulnerabilities it treats are believed to have led to the compromise of Google and about 30 other companies last week in what has been called the “Aurora” attack. The governments of France and Germany suggested that Internet users switch to a different browser until the vulnerability was fixed.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Updates","Vulnerability"],"title":"“Aurora” update brief DoS"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T20:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/protectdefender/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ProtectDefender is a new clone of the WiniGuard family.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"ProtectDefender"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T20:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/web-users-still-dont-select-good-passwords/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Security firm Imperva of Redwood Shores, Calif., found a unique way to gage the quality of the passwords that Web users select: they analyzed the 32 million passwords in the unencrypted file of passwords that miscreants stole from the servers of RockYou.com in December and posted on the Internet.\nRockYou creates and distributes entertainment widgets that work with social networking networks.\nWhat they found wasn’t good, according to their report.\n“Key findings:\n— About 30% of users chose passwords whose length is equal or below six characters.\n_\n_\n— Moreover, almost 60% of users chose their passwords from a limited set of alpha-numeric characters.\n_\n_\n_— Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). _\n_\n_\nThe most common password among Rockyou.com account owners is “123456”.\n","tags":["advice","alert","Security"],"title":"Web users still don’t select good passwords"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T20:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/targeted-attack-using-operation-aurora-as-the-lure/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Now here’s an interesting turn of events.\nIn the middle of all the attention to the “Operation Aurora” attacks, we’re now seeing new targeted attacks that are using this very event as the lure to get the targets to open a malicious attachment!\nHere’s the email we saw:\nThe attachment Chinese cyberattack.pdf (md5: 238ecf8c0aee8bfd216cf3cad5d82448) is a PDF file which exploits the CVE-2009-4324 vulnerability in Adobe Reader (again, this is the one which was patched last week).\n","tags":["Adobe","alert","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Targeted Attack using \"Operation Aurora\" as the lure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T19:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/intelligence-sector-hit-by-a-targeted-attack/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We just blogged about a highly targeted attack against military contractors.\nNow we saw one against the intelligence sector.\nThis attack was done with a PDF file. Again.\nIt was targetting the CVE-2009-4324 vulnerability. Again.\nWhen opened, the PDF file (md5: c3079303562d4672d6c3810f91235d9b) looked like this:\nWhat really happens in the background? Just like last time, the exploit code drops a backdoor in a file called Updater.exe (md5: 02420bb8fd8258f8afd4e01029b7a2b0).\nNow, what is the document talking about? President’s day? DNI Information Sharing Environment? We don’t know, but a quick web search tells us that apparently there is going to be an Intelligence fair \u0026 expo in Germany next month.\n","tags":["Adobe","alert","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Intelligence sector hit by a targeted attack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T19:35:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/microsoft-vulnerabilities/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft is releasing an out-of-band update for their IE vulnerability.\nInternet Explorer 6 is affected and is being actively exploited in the wild.\nThe patch will be released on the 21st, today, see Microsoft’s Security Bulletin for additional details.\nAlso in Microsoft news, Security Advisory (979682). There’s a vulnerability in Windows kernel privilege escalation.\nThe vulnerability affects all versions of Windows (NT 3.51 up to Windows 7), on non x64-based systems, unless 16-bit application support is disabled.\n","tags":["alert","Microsoft","Security"],"title":"Microsoft Vulnerabilities"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-21T19:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/21/microsoft-will-patch-internet-explorer-today/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Microsoft has said it will issue an out-of-band patch today for critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that allow remote execution of code. The company said yesterday it would not wait until the February “Patch Tuesday” to fix the vulnerabilities.\nThe much discussed “Aurora” vulnerabilities in IE have been held at least partially responsible for cyber attacks on Google and more then two dozen other major companies. The attacks on Google were aimed at Gmail accounts of dissidents and Google’s source code. The attacks on the other companies were aimed at stealing intellectual property.\n","tags":["alert","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Microsoft will patch Internet Explorer today"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-16T01:05:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/16/facebook-privacy-doesnt-really-exist/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Facebook recently rolled out new privacy settings that provides additional publishing controls.\nFor example, Facebook users can now publish a photo to a selected list of friends.\nClicking the “lock” icon opens the Custom Privacy settings.\nOnce a photo is selected and the privacy options are set, the next step is to Share.\nAs you can see, the default setting is set for Only Friends and this particular post is set for Only Me.\n","tags":["Facebook","report"],"title":"Facebook Privacy Doesn't Really Exist"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-16T00:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/16/haiti-earthquake-another-rogue-rides-the-news/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"A day after the disaster that struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti, Rogue perpetrators have once again been busy with their SEO poisoning schemes. Searching for terms related to this earthquake leads to a website that installs a Rogue into the system.\nIt happens when an unsuspecting user searches for Haiti Earthquake details. Happily clicking the link leads to this page:\nThen this…\nAnd this…\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Haiti Earthquake: Another Rogue Rides the News"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-16T00:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/16/ghostantivirus/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"GhostAntivirus is a new rogue anti-virus application. It is a clone of InternetAntivirusPro.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"GhostAntivirus"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-16T00:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/16/symantec-spam-and-phishing-landscape-january-2010/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Notable highlights this month include the shift of the regions of message origin, and changes in the average size of spam messages.\nIn recent months, APJ and South America have been taking the spam share away from the traditional leaders of North America and EMEA. However, North America and EMEA together sent 57 percent of spam messages in December 2009, compared with 50 percent in November 2009. With respect to the average size of the messages, the 2kb – 5kb message size category increased by seven percent, while the 5kb – 10kb message size category decreased by six percent in December 2009. With respect to all spam categories, health and product spam have increased and now account for 52 percent of all spam messages. Click here to download the January 2010 State of Spam Report, which highlights the following trends:\n","tags":["Phishing","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Symantec – Spam and Phishing Landscape: January 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-16T00:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/16/new-koobface-variant-saves-researchers-time-from-analysis/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Researchers at McAfee labs monitor Koobface activities 24/7 via custom honeypots and while reviewing one such update we noticed a variant that had debug/log features. Unlike the traditional captcha breaking technique to create new accounts, this variant of the worm converts the infected machine to a bot.\nWhen we analysed the malware trapped in our botnet, we found that this variant of Koobface has a special feature for logging all activities carried out during the infection process in a log file . Log file is created under system root with date and time stamp for eg, C:\\fb_reg20090612.log.\n","tags":["Facebook","Malware","report","Twitter","Security"],"title":"New Koobface variant saves researchers time from analysis"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-16T00:01:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/16/seasons-of-scams/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"With the holiday season behind us, cyber scammers and spammers will now be looking towards the upcoming events and worldwide happenings that they can leverage to form the next waves of online trickery. The noteworthy ones on the horizon include Valentine’s Day, tax-filing season, and the FIFA World Cup – all of which will, in all likelihood, produce their own variety of social engineering techniques, online fraud, malware, fake websites, phishing, and spam.\n","tags":["alert","report","Security"],"title":"Seasons of Scams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-15T23:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/15/consistent-computer-virus-malcode-names/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"InfoSecurity, a great site for computer security news, just put up a story asking the very old question: “Why don’t AV vendors name malcode consistently.”\nThe lead on the piece was: “…Fortinet, Sunbelt Software, and Kaspersky all published their lists of the most prevalent malware strains for the last month of 2009, but they didn’t match up, leading to an admission that users will inevitably be confused by the results.”\nGreat observation, sort of.\n","tags":["report","VirusTotal","Security"],"title":"Consistent Computer Virus Malcode names"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T19:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/whats-near-me-now/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Have you stood outside the restaurant and thought whether to go inside? Google solves this problem very easily. It has come out with yet another mind bobbling feature with Andriods and the iPhone. This Feature is known as ‘Near Me Now’. When you open google.com in your mobile like Andriods or iPhone, you see a small new addition to homepage that is ‘Near Me Now’ option below your search box.\n","tags":["Apple","News"],"title":"What's \"Near Me Now\"?!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T12:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/rimecud-and-hamweq-birds-of-a-feather/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Following the addition of Win32/Hamweq to the MSRT last month, MMPC will continue cleaning PCs in 2010 by adding another prevalent worm, Win32/Rimecud, to this month’s removal tool.\nThis is due not only to Win32/Rimecud’s high detection numbers, which immediately follow those of Win32/Hamweq, but also to the similarities the two families share with each other.\nIn fact, as part of its payload, Win32/Hamweq may download Win32/Rimecud, contributing to Rimecud’s suitability as the next target for MSRT.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Rimecud and Hamweq – birds of a feather"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T12:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/plenty-of-updates-on-patch-tuesday-2/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"This Black Tuesday was different as anticipated – Microsoft releases only one security bulletin, but other companies “jumped in” and deliver updates now as well.\nFor the windows operating systems, only one Security Bulletin was released. MS10-001 deals with a vulnerability in the decompression routines of the Embeded OpenType Font Engine. This means that especially in Windows 2000, programs like Internet Explorer, Word or PowerPoint for example which render EOT fonts can put the system at risk when viewing manipulated contents. In newer operating systems the flawed code is used differently so that Microsoft assumes that it isn’t exploitable there.\n","tags":["Adobe","alert","Microsoft","Patch Tuesday","Updates","Security"],"title":"Plenty of Updates on Patch Tuesday"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T12:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/lethic-gone-another-botnet-bites-the-dust/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"McColo (Nov. 08), Torpig (May 09), MegaD (Nov. 09), Lethic (Jan 10)\nThe Darkreading.com site is reporting that researchers with communications security firm Neustar, of Sterling, Va., working with ISPs has taken over the command-and-control servers and shut down the Lethic botnet. The owners of the Lethic network specialized in diploma, pharmaceutical and replica spam. It is believed that Lethic was responsible for 10 percent of spam.\nOther recent botnet takedowns include:\n— McColo (Nov. 08),\n— Torpig (May 09),\n— MegaD (Nov. 09)\n","tags":["alert","report","Security"],"title":"Lethic gone: another botnet bites the dust"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T12:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/sysdefenders/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SysDefenders is the latest addition to the clones of the WiniGuard rogue anti-spyware family.\nif your computer is infected above malware, you should remove it soon, Click Here to learn how to remove it soon.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"SysDefenders"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/its-nice-to-get-noticed/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Looking at a random new incoming malware sample in F-Secure sample automation systems. Notice the Mutex names it uses:\nHey STFU yourself, why don’t you?\nP.S. It’s detected as Email-Worm:MSIL/Agent.MXK\n","tags":["report"],"title":"It's Nice To Get Noticed"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/busy-time-for-spammers-during-winter-holidays/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The spammers and malware authors profited of the holiday time when a lot of people are at home and sent a large amount of emails just before the official free days. As can be seen in the graphic below, we registered a higher activity in the two days before the holidays and immediately after them. The red bars are either weekend days or holidays (25.12 and 1.1).\nWhat kind of spam was sent?\n","tags":["alert","report","spam","Security"],"title":"Busy time for spammers during winter holidays"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:48:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/blackberry-messenger-the-new-vehicle-to-distribute-hoaxes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I received an interesting IM from a friend via BlackBerry Messenger [BBM] this weekend. She was worried that it could do damage to her shiny new BlackBerry and, as she knew I work for [a security company], she forwarded it to me for my opinion.\nAs soon as I read it, I knew it was a hoax and told her just to delete it.\nIt didn’t really surprise me that these Hoaxes are now being spread via BBM as the devices are becoming increasingly popular. I’m sure all of you have received the usual one via E-mail about a Virus which burns the whole hard disc C of your computer , well now I believe you will be seeing them on your BlackBerry.\n","tags":["alert","BlackBerry","hoax","Mobile","Security"],"title":"BlackBerry Messenger the new vehicle to distribute Hoaxes?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/registered-malware/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Malware authors love to innovate when it comes to persistence and hiding their nefarious creations from detection, and although most of the schemes are not unknown to analysts, they still show that malware authors are constantly on the prowl and evolving their techniques.\nThe example I have is of yet another registry-centric malware which by the nature of its construction has several advantages to defeating naive security software. The sample, detected as Troj/RegExec-A, is essentially a multi-component threat of sorts comprising of at least 3 components (Dropper/installer, Payload and Loader.)\n","tags":["Malware","Security"],"title":"Registered malware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/guard-pro/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Guard Pro is a rogue antispyware software, or a phony. Guard Pro uses fake system scans and warnings to frighten people into buying the software.\nGuard Pro will show system scan results that report numerous infections, which are all fake, and will not remove the supposed infections until the user buys the product. Do not fall for this, it is a complete scam, Guard Pro is the infection itself. Guard Pro will also show system warnings and alerts stating the PC is infected or under attack and prompts the user to buy the software.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Guard Pro"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/mcafee-labs-january-spam-report/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Angelina Jolie and Barack Obama are the #1 celeb subjects of choice for spammers, according to McAfee January Spam Report. The report also reveals:\n• The top 25 men and women that were spammed\n• Chinese pharma spam isn’t going away – in fact, on Dec 14, spam levels skyrocketed with subject lines advertising discounts on Pfizer drugs\n• “Free-hosting” websites to provide spam URLs has become a major target for spammers\n","tags":["report","spam","Security"],"title":"McAfee Labs’ January Spam Report"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T11:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/warning-on-possible-android-mobile-trojans/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Google’s Android mobile operating system has been out for a while and is generating more and more interest.\nNow there has been some buzz about fraudulent applications being posted on the Android Market. See these postings:\nBoth of these apps were written by an anonymous developer known as 09Droid.\nIn fact, he had a whole collection of online banking applications for sale on the Market:\n","tags":["alert","Android","Malware","Mobile","Security"],"title":"Warning On Possible Android Mobile Trojans"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T00:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/owa-malware-is-still-being-sent/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The Internet Storm Center reports that malware which claims to be “new Outlook Web Access settings” is still being sent out by cyber criminals. We saw those malware emails in the middle of October already.\n","tags":["Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"OWA-Malware is still being sent"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-13T00:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/13/insyssecure/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"InSysSecure is a rogue security program, designed to rip people off. InSysSecure uses false security warnings, alerts and system scans to frighten people into thinking their computer systems are infected, all the while InSysSecure is the actual infection.\nif your system is infected with above malware, you should remove it soon, Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"InSysSecure"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-12T22:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/12/w32fame/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Unlike the first malware authors who wrote viruses seeking fame through destruction, their motivation has changed to financial gain.\nNevertheless, there are still the ones out there who share the first authors’ intent. I was analysing a simple Trojan today and saw the following message:\nIt is not uncommon for malware authors to leave messages in their code for Researchers to read.\nThis one did bring a smile to my face, so he was rewarded by it being named BackDoor-EKD which is an increment of one from BackDoor-EKC 😉\n","tags":["Malware","Security"],"title":"W32/Fame"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-12T22:47:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/12/open-season-on-tax-payers/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"As any reader of this blog knows, cybercriminals can steal your money not just by putting malware on your machine, but by phishing attacks too. Phishing attacks don’t just target online banking and e-payment systems, but almost any site which asks the user to input sensitive data.\nSites run by national government agencies are a prime example as they often demand a wealth of personal information which goes far beyond a simple user name or account number + PIN. While filling in a tax return online might seem like a great way to save time and paper, it gives cybercriminals a great opportunity to scoop all your details at once – data which could then be used to steal your identity and/or commit further crimes in your name.\n","tags":["alert","Phishing","Security"],"title":"Open season on tax-payers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-12T22:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/12/firefox-4/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"The third version of Firefox has emerged as the most successful leader in the browser category of all alternatives to Internet Explorer. Since the official launch of its first release in mid 2008 has not only grown in use but also in popularity, although during this time there was a launch of the greatest threat that has known so far, Google Chrome.\nThat is why, people from Mozilla are working hard to beat newcomer in the race to become the most popular browser. It is true that the current “saga” still has to cut fabric, then Firefox 3.6 It is planned for early 2010, and Firefox 3.7 will happen a few months later, respectively including versions 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 Gecko engine.\n","tags":["Apple","Google Chrome","report","review"],"title":"Firefox 4!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-12T22:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/12/sysprotector/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SysProtector and ApcDefender are two new rogue antispyware programs released in the past 48 hours.\nSysProtector and APCDefender are potentially very dangerous PC infections. These rogues use fake security alerts and warnings to trick people into thinking their PC is under attack, all the while they drop fake files on the system. These rogues will also prevent other programs from opening, hijack the web browsers and render the PC nearly useless. Below is a screenshot of a hijacked browser, showing fake threat warnings.\n","tags":["Hijack","Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"SysProtector"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T23:26:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/cybersitter-sues-china-others-for-2-2-billion-in-green-dam-fiasco/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"California software company Cybersitter LLC, has sued the People’s Republic of China and seven computer manufacturers in U.S. Federal court for stealing 3,000 lines of its Internet filter software code and using it in last year’s Green Dam fiasco in China.\nThe suit, “Cybersitter v. the People’s Republic of China,” was filed in U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles). It also names Acer, Lenovo, Sony Corp., Toshiba, Asustek Computer Inc., Benq Corp. and Haier Group as defendants.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"Cybersitter sues China, others, for $2.2 billion in Green Dam fiasco"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T23:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/pcprotectar/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"PCProtectar is the latest rogue security software infecting PC’s across the interwebs. PCProtecter uses false security warnings and system scan results to trick people into buying the software.\nIf your PC has been infected with PCProtectar, don’t fall for the scam. Do not buy this software, it is completely useless and an infection in itself. PCProtectar is a potentially dangerous infection that may cause programs to stop working, web browsers to not open, making it impossible to access the internet. PCProtectar should be removed from infected computer systems immediately.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"PCProtectar"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T23:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/how-to-rescue-files-encrypted-by-data-doctor-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We have a tool available to do just that. Click Here.\nHow to use dd2010_decrypter.exe to do batch processing:\nPlace the encrypted files in a directory (i.e. c:\\encrypted_files\\)\nCopy dd2010_decrypter.exe into another directory and FROM THAT DIRECTORY, run the following command:\nfor %f in (“c:\\encrypted_files\\.”) do dd2010_decrypter.exe %f %f.decrypted\nAll files in the encrypted_files folder will be processed and the new decrypted files will have the same name but their extension will be “.decrypted.”\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","solution","Security"],"title":"How to rescue files encrypted by Data Doctor 2010?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T15:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/identifying-malicious-blogspot-pages-used-by-koobface/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Koobface is still going strong despite not making the headlines so much anymore. Well, the Koobface gang took the time to send a Christmas card and wish security researchers a happy new year. Very nice of them…\nFor a couple of days now I’ve been looking at their infection method and trying to see any interesting patterns.\nThe bad guys use bogus blogpost.com blog pages to redirect users to the actual Koobface malware. The redirection consists of several attempts to connect to compromised PCs, through their IP address. Below is a Fiddler log showing those attempted connections (in red are failed connections). Once a host has successfully responded, the users are redirected to a fake page prompting them to install a video codec.\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Identifying Malicious Blogspot pages used by Koobface"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:58:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/adobe-reader-acrobat-flash-player-updater-coming/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There has been extensive news coverage this week of Adobe’s plans for ramped-up security in its popular Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player applications, especially the Reader and Acrobat updates promised next week.\nA vulnerability that was publicized in December in Reader and Acrobat allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code with a specially crafted PDF file using ZLib compressed streams. In a short time, proof-of-concept code was made public. In the past week, anti-virus companies began intercepting malicious .pdf files that exploit the vulnerability to install a back door on victims’ machines.\n","tags":["News","Patch Tuesday","report"],"title":"Adobe Reader, Acrobat, Flash Player updater coming"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/washable-cell-phone-coming-soon/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Seal Shield, a Jacksonville, Fla., company that makes washable computer keyboards and mice, said it will introduce the world’s first washable cell phone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.\nThe company’s washable mice, keyboards and TV remotes can be cleaned in a dishwasher.\nThis might be good. I have three 20-something step children who have discovered that cell phones as we have come to know them do not survive being dropped in toilets.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"“Washable” cell phone coming soon"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/damn-funny-instant-message-not/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I recently received a suspicious Gmail chat message from a friend (shown below). I was immediately suspicious about the message because this friend has never used chat to talk with me previously, and also he appeared to be offline and the content of the message was similar to messages that other instant messaging worms use.\nI expected that when I clicked on the link I would be asked to download an executable thinly disguised as a photo (for example, coolpic.jpg.exe) like W32.Scrimge.E or that some drive-by exploits would be used on the page such as the ones Koobface uses. Instead I was brought to the following page that asked me to log in to my choice of MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, or AIM accounts to view the “private album.”\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Damn Funny Instant Message—NOT!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/no-malware-nomalware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"No Malware is a rogue security program, or a phony. NoMalware is designed to trick people into purchasing the software, which is actually useless, a PC infection in itself.\nNoMalware will use security scans to alert the user that their PC is infected. These security scans are not real, the infections reported are false. NoMalware will show these falsified scan results and refuse to remove the supposed infections unless the user buys the software. Do not fall for this scam. Victims that purchase NoMalware quickly lean that the software does not prevent infections or remove infections form their PC’s. ","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"No Malware (NoMalware)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/gaming-trojans-because-thats-where-the-money-is/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The massive growth of gold farming – the exchange of real money for virtual goods – might result in an increase in gaming Trojans and other malware aimed at gamers in the future.\nA well-respected researcher has described the incredible growth of “gold farming,” an significant industry and source of employment in China and other parts of Asia. He estimates there are 400,000 people, working for gold farming companies. They spend as much as 12 hours per day playing online games in order to accumulate virtual goods which can be sold to some of the 50 million on-line game players world wide for real cash.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Gaming Trojans: “because that’s where the money is.”"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/pcsprotector/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The creators of WiniGuard rogue security software have released their first clone of 2010. This new rogue is called PcsProtector.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"PcsProtector"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T14:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/one-y2010-bug-surfaces-it-could-really-fill-the-spam-bucket/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Mike Cardwell, an IT consultant in Nottingham, UK, reported on his blog finding a Y2010 bug in Spam Assassin. He found an error in a rule that Spam Assassin folks thought they fixed.\n“I think a lot of systems will be experiencing false positives on their ham because of this at the moment. It is a particularly high scoring rule considering that the default threshold is 5.0,” he wrote.\nFor further information see: SpamAssassin Rule: FH_DATE_PAST_20XX\n","tags":["News","report","Security"],"title":"One Y2010 bug surfaces – it could really fill the spam bucket"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/flash-christmas-and-the-new-year/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"We see spam all the time. One of the most dependable things spammers do is to try and exploit various newsworthy events and holidays.\nRecently, we have seen spammers spreading malware using a combination of either or both flash updates andchristmas scams.\nAdd one more to that list.\nTake for example, a spam I received today. The following email wishes the recipient a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and then displays the following screen in an attempt to entice the user to click on the message. ","tags":["Malware","report","scam","Security"],"title":"Flash, Christmas and the new year"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/thrice-bitten-not-shy/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The one subset of malware which does not immediately seem motivated by financial incentives is the autorun worm. In fact the raison d’etre for this class of malware seems lodged in the annals of yesteryear; summarised in three words it could be “naive script-kiddy kudos”.\nUnlike the propagators of other classes of malware, ie professional criminals, the writers of autorun worms are amateurish upstarts. Ample evidence for this assertion may be found in a recent sample of Sohana, a family of autorun worms, which was cloaked in three layers of known virus infections: the ancient W32/Flcss over W32/Scribble-B over W32/Impair-A.\n","tags":["Malware","report","Security"],"title":"Thrice Bitten, Not Shy"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/glike-not/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"This is an interesting sample, caught by our honeypots.\nThe file comes as a zip archive from qtpom{removed}.tripod.com/codec.zip, which once extracted looks like this:\nIt is almost undetected. Virus Total report here. Truth be told, no blatant sign of malware activity is noticed at first until this:\nWhat the heck? This is not my Google home page. And what are those tabs up there: “Pharmacy”, “Casino”?\nThe malware modifies the Windows hosts file to redirect popular sites to glike.net (IP: 92.241.164.9, Russian Federation).\n","tags":["Hijack","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Glike NOT"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/antivirus-pc-2009/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Antivirus PC 2009 is the latest rogue security software to hit the internet. Antivirus PC 2009 is a complete scam designed to harass PC users into buying the corrupt software.\nAntivirus PC 2009 will try to trick people into thinking that their PC is infected with malware and recommends purchase or registering the software to remove the malware. Antivirus PC 2009 will show false scan results that report numerous infections. Antivirus PC 2009 will also display annoying popups and system alerts that stat the PC is infected, under attack or not protected with antivirus software and recommends buying Antivirus PC 2009. Antivirus PC 2009 will also prevent other programs from opening, even the web browser making it impossible to use the internet, rendering the PC nearly useless.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Antivirus PC 2009"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:40:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/fake-alert-uses-mcafee-like-domain-name-to-attract-victims/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Cybercriminals love to use social engineering techniques to trick users into installing their malware. One of the latest fake-alert variants attempts to trick users into believing the software is related to or hosted by McAfee:mcafeevirusremover.com.\nThe script hosted by the domain can attack the Windows browsers Internet Explorer, Mozilla Seamonkey, and Chrome. The script also affects browsers on Linux platforms.\nThis fake-alert variant is hosted on at least 13 other known domains. McAfee’s Trusted Source blocks the IP addresses and the domains (including DNS and mail servers) associated with this Trojan. For example:\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Fake Alert Uses McAfee-like Domain Name to Attract Victims"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:32:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/no-more-dragons-the-26th-chaos-communication-congress-ends/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"With a dazzling laser show, the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26c3) in Berlin, the last big security conference of 2009, has ended. If you haven’t been here, you might have missed fewer of the sessions than people on site, thanks to the worldwide availablility of live streams (and recordings). What you did miss was meeting all these people, though!\n26c3 has simply outgrown the location it has occupied for the last few years, but this may be offset by a very successful experiment: allowing full remote access to the conference network via VPN for those who couldn’t attend. Other conferences should consider this (hey, Defcon team, are you reading this? 😉 ) as well, especially as air travel becomes less and less attractive.\n","tags":["News","report"],"title":"No More Dragons: the 26th Chaos Communication Congress Ends"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/seen-in-the-wild-specialty-phishing/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"From a site that is hacked and serving phishes:\nWhat’s mildly interesting is the types of phishes — “speciality phishes” that are not your typical banking/finance scam.\nThese are phishes that are highly targeted, in this case at email systems of tiny Hamiltom College (not the first time I’ve seen this), the religious site cfaith.com, Saginaw Valley State University, and Villanova.\ncfaith:\nSVSU\nand Villanova\n","tags":["hack","Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"Seen in the wild: Specialty phishing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:18:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/2010-prediction-roundup/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s the time of year to make predictions. I only have one: in 2010, governments around the world will BEGIN to increase their efforts to do something about the massive malware threat that every Internet user on the planet faces.\nIt’s going to be controversial and difficult legally and technically. It’s going to cost serious tax money, political capital and diplomatic work to counter this crime wave that is like nothing the world has ever known.\n","tags":["alert","Android","Apple","Google Chrome","News","report","Security"],"title":"2010 prediction roundup"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2010-01-06T13:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2010/01/06/greatdefender/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"GreatDefender is a great big scam. GreatDefender is the latest rogue antispyware software, or phony security program that rips people off. If GreatDefender has infected your computer, do not buy the software, you should remove it immediately.\nGreatDefender uses scare tactics to frighten people into buying this corrupt software. These scare tactics include:\nSystem scans that report numerous infections, yet requires purchase of GreatDefender before it will remove the infections (These are fictitious scan results) Alerts and Pop-Up system warnings stating the PC is infected and recommend purchase of GreatDefender (These warnings are fake) Web browser redirecting to random websites (these websites are owned by cyber thieves and will further infect your PC) GreatDefender will prevent other programs from opening, stating they are infected (The programs are not infected) If your windows is infected with this malware you should remove it as soon as possible, Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"GreatDefender"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-31T19:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/31/safe-computing-tips-for-all/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Jerome Segura, a Security Analyst at ParetoLogic of Victoria, B.C., Canada, just posted a nice piece on computer security practices with a different perspective in his “Malware Diaries” Blog.\nHe begins his list of security tips by considering four classes of users:\nthe pre-baby boomers: These folks rarely touched a computer in their lives and if they did, kudos!\nTypical use: Work, Solitaire, Printing stuff. the early and late baby boomers: They have been interacting with computers pre-Internet and have good notions but lack the ‘modern day stuff’.\nTypical use: Work, e-mail, Online searches. the 70’s – 80’s users: These guys are definitely into computers, maybe a bit more gaming and such. They possess quite a good sense of computing.\nTypical use: Games, Work, E-mail, Online Dating, Forums 90’s to present: Some of them were born with a computer or handheld device. Their lives would not be possible without the MSN, Skype and more recently all the social engineering glitter.\nTypical use: Twittering, Facebooking, Online shopping. then makes further distinctions by level of security knowledge and awareness:\n","tags":["advice","alert","Apple","Security","Skype"],"title":"Safe Computing Tips For All"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T22:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/what-do-you-see/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I recently had an interesting message arrive in my system; after viewing the message, 100% of those polled agreed on what it was. What do you think?\nWhat do YOU see?\nIf you answered spam, you’re on your way to having the mentality of a spam analyst.\nThis message has many hallmarks of classic unsolicited commercial email:\nthe middle of the message says “Click Here” in big prominent text there’s an “opt-out” banner, announcing that this is an ad the ad contains a “unique ID” despite the (intentionally obscured) address, the message does not say who it is actually from the “call to action” link is http :/fefcbdacggbfg.[redacted].info/alphaville/4754-1b416/ — random sub-domain, published in the .info top level domain, with a directory name comprised of two random words, and a sub-directory that looks like yet another unique identifier. everything in this message except for the “unique ID” under the opt-out banner is actually an image. Those of you who are actually interested in psychology will also note that the inkblot is not actually part of either the Rorsach or the Holtzman Inkblot Test. It seems to me that this message is more designed to take advantage of those who are willing to try anything to get a job. In the long run, an accredited educational institution will likely be much more beneficial.\n","tags":["spam","Security"],"title":"What do you see?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T16:54:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/antiviruspc2009/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Is this the last rogue for 2009? The cyber criminals will probably ditch 2009 in their naming after the New Year.AntivirusPC2009 may still trick some people before next year though. The fraud tool downloads files on the system and detects them after a scan has been performed.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"AntivirusPC2009"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T15:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/not-so-funny-jokes/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Activities associated with Koobface have increased during the month of December. Often it is for the sending of traffic to compromised servers in order to obtain more servers. Other times the activity centers around using those same compromised servers to proxy users to malicious domains that are then used for further distribution of malware or command and control of the infected machines.\nI noticed a trend with some of the domain-based locations making use of the holiday theme. This has included everything from “presents for your pets” to “festive holiday trees” – these are domains that appear legitimate but are not. In fact, many of the domains that are being used were legitimate at one point and now are serving a different, more questionable purpose.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"Not-so funny jokes"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T15:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/systemcleanerpro/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SystemCleanerPRO is a rogue antivirus program, or a complete scam. SystemCleanerPRO uses fake security alerts and fictitious system pop-ups that warn or infections to frighten users into buying the software. SystemCleanerPRO is a complete rip-off and should be removed form infected PC’s immediately.\nIf SystemCleanerPRO has infected your computer, you may experience the following symptoms:\nSlow sluggish PC SystemCleanerPRO running a system scan every time you turn your PC on System alerts warning you that the computer is under attack or is not protected, recommending you purchase SystemCleanerPro Web browser redirecting to random websites (which are owned by the crooks who author this and other malicious software) Other programs not opening or shutting down if your windows is infected with these kind of malware Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"SystemCleanerPRO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T13:23:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/twitter-banned-passwords/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"As you may have heard in the last few days, Twitter has banned 370 passwords (actually only 369, ‘password’ appears twice in the list) as ‘too obvious’ to be safe for their users. A good move in theory but why are so few words banned? And what are they? The list is available in various places online, or even just by viewing the source of the Twitter sign up page. Sadly the sports fans in this Sophos office may be out of luck with both ‘boston’ and ‘redsox’ making the banned list.\n","tags":["Social Media","Twitter"],"title":"Twitter banned passwords"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T13:17:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/facebook-and-twitter-security-and-how-to-stay-safe/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Hopefully, the holiday season has found you spending a good amount of time offline: enjoying moments spent with friends and family, keeping long-standing traditions or creating new ones to follow for seasons to come, or just relaxing due to some downtime from work or school.\nIt wouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though, if you’ve still found yourself spending a fair share of your time during the holidays online: checking status updates and posting new pictures on Facebook, or sending and checking tweets on Twitter. And, why not? These networking sites are an easy way to connect and share with the people we care about.\n","tags":["alert","Facebook","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Facebook and Twitter Security – And How to Stay Safe!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T13:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/antispyware-shield-pro/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Antispyware Shield Pro is a phony security software, also known as a rogue. Antispyware Shield Pro uses fake security warnings and pop-up alerts to frighten people into thinking their PC is infected. Antispyware Shield Pro will not remove these supposed infections until you purchase the software. Do not fall for this scam, Antispyware Shield Pro is an infection itself.\nif your windows is infected with these kind of malware Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Antispyware Shield Pro"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T13:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/total-pc-defender/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Total PC Defender is a rogue security software, a complete scam designed to rip people off. If Total PC Defender has infected your PC, you should remove it immediately.\nif your windows is infected with these kind of malware Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Total PC Defender"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-29T12:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/29/researchers-take-down-mega-d-one-of-top-10-botnets/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Atif Mushtaq, a researcher at FireEye security company, has coordinated a global effort to take down of one of the top 10 botnets – Mega-D.\nPC world said the botnet controlled 250,000 machines in a massive network that was responsible for nearly 12 percent of world spam according to Message Labs statistics.\nMushtaq and those working with him coordinated their efforts with Internet service providers to isolate the Mega-D command-and-control servers in Israel, Turkey and the U.S.\n","tags":["News","spam","Security"],"title":"Researchers take down Mega-D, one of top 10 botnets"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-25T12:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/25/a-christmas-greeting-from-koobface/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Security researchers examining the directories of the URLs of some of the latest Koobface runs may stumble upon a Christmas greeting:\n","tags":["Facebook","Other"],"title":"A Christmas greeting from Koobface"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-24T22:04:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/24/are-you-caring-for-your-mom-and-dad-at-xmas/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"For those of you that are having to put up with looking after your parents over Christmas: Would you much rather selfishly indulge yourselves with partying? A kindly spammer has a very seasonal Christmas Eve message offering to make this the last year that you will have to “put up” with the burdens of family elders.\nBut be careful that your own children don’t read this.\nFree Help Finding Senior Care for Mom or Dad\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Are you caring for your Mom and Dad at Xmas?"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-24T21:51:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/24/apcprotect/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"APCProtect is a phony security program, designed to rip people off. APCProtect uses scare tactics including false security warnings and system scan results that are false to frighten people into purchasing it. If APCProtect is installed on your computer, you should remove it immediately.\nif your computer is infected with this malware, you must remove it soon, Click Here to learn how to remove it.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"APCProtect"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-24T21:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/24/merry-christma-exec/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Once again, we’d like to wish our readers Merry Christmas with a reference to the 1986 CHRISTMA EXEC worm\nHere’s a link to January 1987 Risks Digest, discussing the worm.\nAnd here’s a link to the original source code for this worm. Normally we wouldn’t link to malware code, but hey, it’s 23 years old.\n","tags":["Other"],"title":"Merry CHRISTMA EXEC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-23T22:59:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/23/av-comparatives-summary-reports-2009-available/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"AV-Comparatives Summary Reports 2009 Available!\nSummary Report 2009\nAV-Comparatives Site: http://www.av-comparatives.org/\nRead/Download Summary Here.\nOverall winners of 2009 (Best Products of the Year by AV-Comparatives):\nTo be rated “Best Anti-Virus Product of 2009” by AV-Comparatives, an Anti-Virus product should preferably have very high detection rates (of malware and also potentially unwanted applications), high proactive on-demand detection (or provide proactive protection), very few false positives (FP), scan fast and reliably with a low system impact, provide good malware removal capabilities, protect the system against malware/websites with malicious software without relying too much on user decisions/interactions, cause no crashes or hangs, and have no annoying bugs.\nBased on the awards given by AV-Comparatives during 2009, several products got many high awards and are very close, so that we decided to award not only the Best Product of 2009 but also the second and third places (Silver and Bronze). Looking into the detail of the raw results, we decided to give the following awards:\n","tags":["News"],"title":"AV-Comparatives Summary Reports 2009 Available!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-23T16:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/23/all-about-brittany-on-twitter/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s the usual situation, with the bad guys exploiting the death of a famous person, just like they did with Michael Jackson. Yesterday we identified some Twitter accounts that are being used both to send “make money on the Internet” spam, and also to spread links to malware. In both cases, they used Brittany Murphy’s name.\nHere’s a couple of examples:\nThe actual text of messages of this type can vary. What characterizes them is that the first link is genuine, i.e. it leads to a site which really does talk about the topic tweeted. The second link though, leads to standard spam advertising sites which tell you how to earn money on the Internet, offer various goods, etc. The second type of tweet we’re seeing is undeniably malicious. These tweets, like the first type, use Brittany Murphy’s name, but have a shortened bit.ly URL leading to malware:\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"All about Brittany on Twitter"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-22T23:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/22/latest-av-comparatives-test-available-performance-comparative/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Performance comparative test result is available!\nAV-Comparatives: http://www.av-comparatives.org/\nRead/Download test result from Here.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"Latest AV-Comparatives test Available (Performance comparative)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-22T13:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/22/nra-beware-the-12-scams-of-christmas/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"This is the ‘12 scams of Christmas’ I mentioned in last post:\nPipers tout fake gold rings as Maids are ‘a-phishing’ to milk bank accounts\nOn what is traditionally the busiest online shopping day of the year (1), consumers are being warned not to become victims of the ‘12 Scams of Christmas’ and to take extra care with personal and IT security.\nThe ‘12 Scams of Christmas’ developed by the National Fraud Authority (NFA), The UK Cards Association and the City of London Police (CoLP) highlight the greatest holiday fraud threats and how to spot them.\n","tags":["alert","News","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"NRA: Beware the '12 scams of Christmas'"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-22T13:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/22/the-12-scams-of-christmas/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Tanya has just posted over on Kaspersky Russian site about losses caused by Internet fraudsters in England and Wales. If you want to practice your Russian, hop over there, and take a look!\nI know that most people in the UK prefer to get their news in English. So here’s a few facts and figures:\nIn a recent statement, the Office of Fair Trading estimated that losses caused by Internet fraud amounted to £14 billion per year. That’s a lot of money! It’s also a lot of victims!\n","tags":["alert","News","Security"],"title":"The 12 scams of Christmas"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-22T13:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/22/crime-time/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Crime traditionally increases during the holiday season, and cybercrime is no different. The malware writers, spammers and scammers are out in force. They’ve recently hit “Odnoklassniki” with this message:\n“Hi! I’ve got a New year surprise for you [emoticon] send 2133 279 (must be with a space) to 4460 and you’ll be pleasantly surprised! If you don’t take a look, I’ll be very grouchy with you [emoticon]”\nThis message is clearly designed to make the bad guys a bit of holiday cash: an SMS sent to the number given in the message costs between $5 and $12 dollars, depending on the mobile service provider.\n","tags":["Hijack","Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Crime time"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-22T12:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/22/us-chief-of-cybersecurity/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"After months of negotiations, US President Barack Obama has finally chosen a Chief of CyberSecurity – Mr Howard A Schmidt. Confirmation of the appointment is expected shortly.\nMr Schmidt, who previously served with the Bush administration as a cyber security official, comes to the job with an impressively lengthy list of credentials.\nThe new Chief will essentially be the administration’s go-to man for any coordinated efforts to deal with cyber threats and will be reporting to the National Security Council.\n","tags":["News"],"title":"US Chief of CyberSecurity"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-22T11:11:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/22/facebook-money-mule-or-credit-card/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"I was just looking at Facebook to check for spam and scams when I found this:\nI’ve blurred out a few things for privacy, and, most crucially, safety. The point of this post is the domain name. The spaces around the dot and the zero in “C0M” are just as they were in the original spam message. If spammers are going to the trouble to obfuscate their messages, it seems to show that Facebook’s spam filters are having some effect. Malformed links mean that you have to make an serious effort to actually go and visit the spammer site. And consequently, if someone’s going to go through all that trouble, they’re more likely to buy into whatever scam is at the other end. Click on the link, and you immediately get redirected, even though you won’t notice:\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Facebook: money mule or credit card"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-21T22:56:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/21/check-your-friends-facebook-ims-may-lead-to-trouble/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"I ran into a few strange IMs over the weekend. When I was not shoveling out my driveway from the 15 inches of snow that covered it I was logged into Facebook telling people about it…. It was then that I started receiving some VERY interesting IMs from a friend extolling the virtues of a clean colon (yep – you read that right):\nThis lead to the following questionable site, which had some very interesting comments on McAfee SiteAdvisor site:\n","tags":["Facebook","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Check Your Friends! Facebook IMs May Lead To Trouble"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-21T22:44:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/21/brittany-murphy-seo/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Just a quick note – the sudden death of Hollywood celebrity Brittany Murphy last Sunday (BBC report here) has prompted a spike in searches on the subject – and of course, an SEO attack.\nUsers who click on a poisoned search result link will be redirected to a website that will display a scare message trying to panic users into downloading rogue AV software:\nScreenshots of the rogue AV:\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Brittany Murphy SEO"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-21T22:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/21/christmas-bogus/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Well, it didn’t take long for the Christmas E-Card scams to start.\nRecently we have seen email messages pretending to be from Hallmark, suggesting that you have received an E-card from a friend. The complete email message looks like this:You have recieved a Hallmark E-Card from your friend.\nTo see it, check the link below:\nhttp://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/Occasion/ChristmasE-CardsThere’s something special about that E-Card feeling. We invite you to make a friend’s day and send one.Hope to see you soon, Your friends at Hallmark\n","tags":["alert","Malware","spam","Security"],"title":"Christmas Bo(g)us"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-21T22:39:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/21/protectpcs/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"ProtectPC’s is a nasty rogue antivirus program, or phony security software, used to scam people out of their money. If your PC is infected with ProtectPC’s you should remove it immediately.\nProtecPC’s poses a serious security risk for all PC users. Symptoms of a ProtecPC infection can include:\nWeb Browser redirecting spontaneously System scans that result in reports showing multiple infections Pop-Ups and system alerts stating the PC is infected Programs being shut down or unable to open Click Here to learn how to remove these kind of malware.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"ProtectPCs"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-21T22:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/21/malware-defense/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Malware Defense is a rogue security program, designed to look like legitimate security software. If Malware Defense has been installed on your PC more than likely you did not intentionally download it, it just appeared one day.\nMalware Defense usually infects a computer system with help from malicious advertising or a trojan found on a shady website. Malware Defense usually infects unsuspecting users PC’s without permission. Malware Defense is a scam, do not buy this software, it should be removed from infected computers immediately.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Malware Defense"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-20T00:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/20/last-minute-shopping-keep-safe/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The holidays are nearly here! If you’re still searching for the final perfect present, and are thinking of buying online, here’s a few practical tips to help keep your last-minute purchases secure:\nKeep your Internet Security solution updated, not just to the day but to the hour! They release frequent updates to make sure you’re protected from the very newest malware. Scan your system before you start shopping.\nDon’t shop from public WiFi networks which aren’t secured using WPA2. These networks can be easily hijacked by cybercriminals, and your sensitive financial data could be compromised.\n","tags":["Advice","Hijack","Security"],"title":"Last minute shopping – keep safe!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-19T21:46:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/19/system-adware-scanner-2010/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"System Adware Scanner 2010 is phony security software, made to look and act like legitimate security software. System Adware Scanner 2010 is a potentially very dangerous PC infection that should be removed from infected systems immediately.\nSystem Adware Scanner 2010 usually uses false security warnings and alerts to frighten people into buying the software. System Adware Scan 2010 will run system scans and report numerous infections to the user, which are false. System Adware Scanner 2010 will then request payment to remove the supposed infections.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"System Adware Scanner 2010"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-19T14:13:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/19/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-free-movie/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Those looking to see the latest 3D blockbuster movie, The Avatar, on the cheap will have to take great care in what they search for. We have become aware of at least one site that has been rigged to redirect users to a page that presents the now-familiar “play video/need codec” screen. In an unusual twist, this time it is offering a new ActiveX update rather than the usual codec or Flash player updates.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","Security"],"title":"There's No Such Thing as a Free Movie"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-19T13:41:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/19/data-doctor-2010-will-make-you-sick/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Data Doctor 2010, an encryption trojan via our old “friends” iframedollars. It encrypts the files on your hard drive very rapidly if you’re unfortunate enough to be victimized by it.\nIt arrives through drive by downloads from malicious web sites. It’s also packaged with other malware.\nThe victim receives a message that the system is shutting down due to “Unrecognized disk driver command.” His system is then re-booted to safe mode and a message is displayed: “Windows has recovered from a serious error. Some files can be corrupted. Disk checking is strongly recommended.” ","tags":["Malware","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Data Doctor 2010 will make you sick"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-19T13:33:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/19/the-most-phished-brands-of-2009/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Almost the entire year 2009, the battle for the first place on phishing targets took place between Ebay and Chase Bank. Most of the time, the Chase Bank was on top of the most phished brands.\nIn December, the situation was changed: Now PayPal is the most phished brand (32205 unique URLs) followed from far away by the Chase Bank (25901 unique URLs) and Ebay (18738 unique URLs).\n","tags":["Phishing","spam","Security"],"title":"The most phished brands of 2009"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-19T13:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/19/cnnic-changes-have-effect-on-spam-tactics/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"As was announced on Dec 11th, CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) now requires a “formal paper based application material when making the online application to the registrar.”\nThe motivation behind this seems more related to cracking down on porn sites, but since .cn domains have been the call-to-action in 35-50% of all spam being sent for well over a year, we were wondering what effect this policy change may have on the prevalence of this TLD in spam. The graph below illustrates the percentage of spam messages sent each day that contain a .cn domain (vast majority are Canadian Pharmacy type spam) as well as the percentage of pharmacy spam messages sent that contain a link to a free webhosting service (blue). I decided to measure the .cn abuse, against free webhosting abuse, as the same Canadian Pharmacy spam that contained links to .cn domains for the past few months, now contain links to a number of free webhosting services instead. The CNNIC changes started to be applied on December 14th.\n","tags":["report","spam","Security"],"title":"CNNIC changes have effect on spam tactics"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-19T13:24:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/19/microsoft-privacy-portal-a-target-of-rogue-security-software/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Earlier in 2009, the Microsoft privacy homepage became the target of rogue security software developers looking to make a fast buck. The developers of the rogue security application known as “Privacy Center” even went so far as to include a link to Microsoft to trick users into thinking the rogue is a Microsoft product. Trojan:Win32/PrivacyCenter is a family of programs that claims to scan for malware and displays fake warnings of “malicious programs and viruses”. They then inform the user that they need to pay money to register the software in order to remove these non-existent threats.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Microsoft privacy portal a target of rogue security software"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-18T23:28:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/18/now-there-are-many-more-ways-to-keep-reading-my-blog-and-receiving-updates-from-me/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"you may follow me on Twitter:\nSubscribe for my RSS:\nhttps://omid.dev/index.xml\nOr receive my posts updates in your E-Mail Inbox:\nSubscribe to Omid’s Blog! by Email\n","tags":["This Blog Update"],"title":"now there are many more ways to keep reading my blog and receiving updates from me!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-18T15:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/18/twitter-defaced-by-iranian-hacktivists/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Twitter, one of the Internets most popular social networking sites, has been hacked and defaced by a group claiming to be an “Iranian Cyber Army” as of 10:15PM PST today. At this point no statement has been made by Twitter, so it’s unclear as to what vulnerability was used to exploit the site. Oftentimes hacktivism campaigns are fueled by ego-driven script kiddies who use publicly available exploits, but for now we’ll have to wait and see if Twitter decides to publicly announce the details surrounding the attack. The defacement has been removed and Twitter is back up and running as of 11:20 PM PST.\n","tags":["hack","Social Media","Twitter","Security"],"title":"Twitter Defaced by Iranian Hacktivists"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-18T01:07:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/18/fbi-fraudsters-earned-150-million-in-rogue-av-scams/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"For the first time, the FBI has issued a public warning about the threat of rogue anti-virus software, which the agency said has resulted in more than $150 million in losses to victims.\nIn an intelligence note posted Friday on the website of the Internet Crime Complaint Center, the FBI said users should be on the lookout for pop-up advertisements masking as legitimate-looking AV software, known as “rogueware” or “scareware.”\nRogue anti-virus software typically is purveyed through malicious advertisements, or “malvertisements,” on trusted websites. When viewed or clicked, the ads lead users to sites that claim their computer is infected and, to resolve the issue, they should buy an anti-virus product, which turns out to be fake. In other instances, the ads try to install trojans onto the victim’s PC.\n","tags":["News","report","rogue software","Security"],"title":"FBI: Fraudsters earned $150 million in rogue AV scams"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-18T00:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/18/winiguard-clones-are-coming-thick-and-fast/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Another Clone of WiniGuard family, SysDefence! went live about 3 hours ago. They’re flying off the conveyor belt today.\nThe GUI is identical to TheDefend except the name.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"WiniGuard clones are coming thick and fast"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-17T23:19:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/17/spam-for-the-visually-impaired/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Starting at ~3:20pm GMT today, Canadian Pharmacy spammers began using attached MP3 files as the call-to-action for their latest campaign. The message had no subject, no “text” body content, just an attached “audio/mpeg” file with a random lower case file name.\nUpon playing the attached mp3 file, you find out why I called it the “call-to-action”. A robotic sounding woman’s voice reads off the URL they would like recipients to browse to (letter by letter), with porn-like moaning as background noise. I guess they are going for the often used spam tactic of tying ED pills (Viagra, Cialis, etc..) to porn star-like performance in bed.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Spam for the visually impaired"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-17T23:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/17/whos-the-quickest-only-one-way-to-find-out/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Earlier on this morning I happened to notice a redirect page used in a meds spam campaign that just happened to also be compromised with a malicious script.\nYou can see the META tag redirect that will instruct the browser to immediately load the page on the target site. And immediately below, it, the obfuscated JavaScript injected into the page. Deobfuscating this script, we can see its payload is also redirection, this time to a malware site.\n","tags":["Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Who’s the quickest? Only one way to find out…"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-17T22:27:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/17/do-you-want-bing-for-iphone-theres-an-app-for-that/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Earlier this evening, Microsoft formally announced a new search app for iPhone on the Bing Community blog. The Bing app is available now from the App Store, complete with voice search. I emphasize the now because the app has a December 16 release date on the 15th.\nBased on a very quick, cursory look, Bing is a competent iPhone app, tapping into the kind of capabilities expected from the platform. Bing fits nicely into the App Store repertoire. I wouldn’t call the features revolutionary — Apple and Google are there already with advanced mapping and GPS — but the packaging appeals, and Microsoft manages to offer a user experience that is fairly consistent with Bing Web search.\n","tags":["Announcement","Apple","Bing","Microsoft","Updates"],"title":"Do you want Bing for iPhone? There's an app for that"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-17T22:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/17/merry-christmas-idiot/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s not a huge surprise that we are seeing some malware spam runs where the malicious attachment attempts to portray itself as a Christmas Greeting of some sort.\nHere’s an example from today (md5: C670165AE6DFA8318F0EA795B1D3AD55). This one is actually a Zapchast (IRC bot variant).\nThe “Christmas Card” requires it’s own “special version” of Flash to be installed — flashplayer2009.exe — which is the malware itself.\nOnce ready, it will display this friendly message written in Universal Gibberish.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Merry Christmas, Idiot"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-16T20:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/16/like-clockwork-the-next-member-of-the-winiguard-rogue-family-appears/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I blogged about the three generations of the WiniGuard family of rogue security products that began in October of 2008. Friday, the 50th rogue in that line appeared. Analyst Patrick Jordan noted that there appeared to be a newly named clone added to the “genealogy” about every 48 hours. He’s been right.\nMonday they found GuardPCS and today they found TheDefender. Its associated web site was registered Dec. 4.\nFraudulent operators behind the rogues seem to be doing two things to confuse Internet users and lure them into purchasing this worthless scare ware:\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Like clockwork: the next member of the WiniGuard rogue family appears"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-15T23:53:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/15/10-million-people-will-you-computers-are-perfectly-safe/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"New rogue borrows massively from AV company sites\nOur friend M.N. Bharath drew our attention to this web site associated with the new System Adware Scanner 2010 rogue security product. Although the group claims 10 million users world-wide, oddly enough their site was only registered Nov. 25.\nIt seems they also have recruited the entire management team from AVG anti-virus company as well. Right!\nCompare the names on the Smart Systems Technologies rogue page. http://sysadscanner.com/about.php\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"10 million people will you computers are perfectly safe"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-15T22:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/15/dangerous-web-searches/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Don’t go there. There are a lot of rogue downloaders hiding in those links.\nYahoo CEO Carol Bartz, speaking at the UBS Media and Communications Conference in New York, said the Tiger Woods sex scandal was a better traffic generator than the death of Michael Jackson, according to the ZDNet blog.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Phishing","Yahoo","Security"],"title":"Dangerous web searches"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-15T21:36:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/15/the-biggest-rogue-family/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The third generation of WiniGuard gets a new clone every 48 hours\nA new rogue security product called IGuardPC, is the 50th clone of the WiniGuard family of rogue security products. That makes WiniGuard the largest rogue family ever.\nThe WiniGuard family began in September of 2008. Operators behind it have added variants that has sorted into three generations. The latest generation gets a new clone about every 48 hours to stay ahead of public awareness and anti-malware detections.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","Security"],"title":"The biggest rogue family"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-15T21:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/15/never-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-nor-a-web-site-by-its-pages/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Case in point: findproper[dot]org\nThese are the types of sites that are used to download from third party affiliate sites. If the setup.exe had run, it would have installed the AntiMalware rogue.\n","tags":["Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Never judge a book by its cover nor a Web site by its pages"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-15T21:03:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/15/naked-elves-distract-nerds/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"What’s the best way to distract an online gamer while you drop some undesirable files onto their system? We saw what’s probably a pretty effective method today in Troj/Lneage-A. This particular Trojan leaves the user viewing a slideshow of topless elves while it drops a file designed to steal their gaming info. Given that the vast majority of MMORPG’ers are male, and bless them they’re often a little bit lonely, dazzling them with a variety of images of well endowed half naked elves (I think they’ve had some work done to be honest) should be enough to keep them entertained while the malware authors do whatever they fancy in the background.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","Security"],"title":"Naked elves distract nerds"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-15T19:43:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/15/security-hole-in-adobe-reader-and-acrobat/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":" Adobe is currently investigating a new security hole in Reader and Acrobat. Cybercriminals are currently spamming emails with prepared documents which lead to an infection of the computer with malware.\nThe PDF document abuses a buffer overflow in a new place within the Adobe programs. There is a JavaScript object included in the PDF which checks the Reader Version – the exploit works with Adobe Reader starting at version 8. The code it injects downloads malware which it stores in the file “winver32.exe” in the Windows directory. This file drops 3 further files which Avira detects as BDS/Ientlcp.A, TR/Agent.faa and TR/Agent.HO.\n","tags":["Adobe","alert","Vulnerability","Security"],"title":"Security hole in Adobe Reader and Acrobat"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-14T13:09:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/14/oh-oh-oh-santa-delivering-fakeav-presents/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Following on from the latest Captcha techniques used by the W32/Koobface worm, it seems that the malware authors have turned to Santa for help to deliver it’s nasty surprise which awaits Facebook users. The infection drops other trojans such as FakeAlert and leaves the user renderless.\nIt all begins with a post on a user’s Facebook Wall. If the user clicks on the link, they are presented with a fake video player with a Christmas greeting as shown below\n","tags":["Facebook","Malware","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"“OH” “OH” “OH”, Santa Delivering FakeAV Presents"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-14T00:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/14/tiger-still-hot-stuff/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Despite talk of Tiger Woods’ sponsors “limiting his role” in their advertising campaigns, he is still very much hot stuff when it comes to search engine queries which means he’s still a viable target for the malware writers.\nWe can see that Tiger Woods related searches are still being poisoned with malicious results using Search Engine Optimisation techiques:\nThis leads to the familiar:\nWhich when downloaded installs fake AV branded as “Security Tool”.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Tiger still hot stuff"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-11T01:31:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/11/new-wave-of-sql-injection-attacks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Reports have reached us of a fresh SQL injection attack that has compromised many websites – a google search of the malicious iframe nets over 100000 hits. As is typical, the iframes lead to more html pages that load yet more iframes that contain obfuscated Javascript that attempt to exploit the unfortunate visitor. A successful exploit leads to a download of a malware of the Buzus family.\nPlease take care about the sites you visit, try to visit sites using Sandboxed browsers and also keep your antivirus/antivirus updated.\n","tags":["alert","Security"],"title":"New wave of SQL Injection Attacks"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-11T01:06:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/11/rebranded-rogue-claims-to-be-mcafee-secure-certified/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Internet Security 2010, It’s a rebranded clone of Advanced Virus Remover, a rogue security product.\nIt’s one of your run-of-the mill rogues, using run-of-the mill scare tactics, except its payment screen contains a static graphic that imitates the McAfee Secure certification.\nA real “McAfee Secure” certification is a DAILY certification, it contains the date and its logo should look like this:\nWhen you click on it, it should take you to the McAfee Secure rating verification page: https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify that gives the name of the certified web site and the “Status”.\n","tags":["Phishing","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"Rebranded rogue claims to be McAfee Secure certified"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-10T16:57:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/10/google-work-at-home-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Lately, a Google work at home scam has been plastering its way throughout the Internet. The scam site is designed to look like a convincing news paper article and is currently circulating heavily through social networks (hacked and spam accounts) and ad networks.\nExample of the scam wall post on Facebook from a hacked account:\nThe scam site:\nTo “cash in on the opportunity” all you have to do is fork up a measly $1.95 for the “Easy Google Profit” kit. Unfortunately, if you fall for the scam, you’re going to be taken for more than what you bargained for. Ripoff Report shows one victims struggle with these scam artists. Aparently they automatically started charging the victim $39.98 per month on top of an additional $129.95 fee. On top of that, they enrolled him in a 14 day trial for another site, which charges $29.95 a month if not canceled in time.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Google Work At Home Scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-10T16:12:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/10/microsoft-hack/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Basically, the rogue antispy was directing the victim to a genuine Microsoft address, but was modifying the html on the fly as it came back from the real Microsoft page. It made it read that Microsoft was recommending that the victim should buy the rogue. That’s a pretty good trick that will catch a lot of folks, and it reminded us of another one that we frequently see.\nIt works like this… The victim attempts to reach Microsoft, or receives a link like http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9480113 and if you go there on a normal computer, you see a page like this (click to enlarge)…\n","tags":["hack","Microsoft","Phishing","scam","Security"],"title":"Microsoft Hack"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-10T15:50:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/10/new-rogue-safetyantispyware/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"SafetyAntispyware is a new rogue anti-spyware application. However, the functionality follows the same pattern as other rogues.\nFirst, it will detect some fake infections. Then it will ask the user to license the product to remove these “threats”. It will also keep reminding the user about these fake infections and will urge the user to activate the software.\nFor more information Click Here.\n","tags":["rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"New rogue: SafetyAntiSpyware"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-10T15:38:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/10/everyone-may-not-be-your-friend/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"There were two news stories recently that seemed to coincide. In the first, Cisco issued an annual security report which said the two current targets of the Internet criminal underground are banks and social networks. Banks because, well, we all know what they keep there. Social networks are targets because that’s where weakly protected password databases are kept and the passwords they contain probably are used on a lot of other sites as well.\n","tags":["Facebook","privacy","Social Media"],"title":"“Everyone” may not be your friend"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T23:10:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/securitytool-rogue-is-trying-to-be-a-moving-target/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"The SecurityTool rogue security product, which first turned up early in October, is still active and trying to avoid countermeasures by setting up 12-24 download sites per day.\nIt comes in two flavors online scanner scam:\nand fake codec scam:\nFor more information Click Here.\n","tags":["alert","Malware","rogue software","scam","Security"],"title":"SecurityTool rogue is trying to be a moving target"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T01:29:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/limeware-and-other-p2p-software-present-child-prn-risks/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"I’ve been saying this for a long time. P2P networks are have the risk of accidently getting something you really don’t want…\nMatthew White, of Sacramento, California, has found himself in a rather unfortunate situation; he’s been accused of downloading child pornography. On the advice of his public defender, White is pleading guilty in hopes of cutting his potential 20-year sentence down to three and a half years. After serving his time, White will have to serve 10 years of probation and register as a sex offender.\n","tags":["P2P","Sex"],"title":"Limeware and other P2P software present child p*rn risks"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T01:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/beware-of-fake-microsoft-updates-coming-through-email/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Email is still the most common method used for security update notifications from all major vendors, but it is also the most commonly used trigger for launching the chain of infection attacks by malware writers. When I came to work today I found in my Inbox a message from Microsoft with the Security Bulletin Advance Notification for December. I immediately clicked on one of the links to visit the yet to be published December Security Bulletin and investigate how many critical vulnerabilities will be fixed this month.\n","tags":["alert","Apple","Microsoft","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"Beware of fake Microsoft updates coming through email"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T01:08:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/it-pays-to-read-the-fine-print-literally/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"This is a new one: bribeware. They’ll pay you a dollar to install their product.\nNice idea, but unfortunately in this case it comes bundled with malware. We detect it as C4DLMedia, a group of installers that include adware and agents that change browser home pages. It’s considered a “moderate” risk.\nI wonder if Microsoft considered this for VISTA.\nC4DL Media might have a marketing problem with the dollar bribe though. In places where a dollar is worth enough to make this worth the effort there probably isn’t any Internet connectivity.\n","tags":["Malware","Security"],"title":"It pays to read the fine print (literally)"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T01:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/turscar-riomhphoist-spam-email-in-irish/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"According to the 2002 Census of the Population, 42% of the population of Ireland has the ability to speak Irish. Irish has also had official and working language status at the EU level since January 1, 2007. Recently, some examples of spam messages in Irish—the official language of the Republic of Ireland—have been observed.\nWhile the Irish translation is generally pretty good in this example, there are some anomalies between how certain phrases have been constructed. For example:\n","tags":["spam","Security"],"title":"Turscar ríomhphoist – Spam Email (in Irish)!"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T00:55:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"It has come to our attention recently that a website is giving out instructions on how to use a low tech social engineering trick to view private Facebook profiles. To view the instructions, a third-party application must be first downloaded and installed. While this application is not malware, it may impact computer performance. The instructions then describe how to view private Facebook profiles, with the result being that a Facebook user may receive a friend request from a person that is already on their friend list.\n","tags":["Technology News"],"title":"A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T00:52:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/fifa-world-cup-tickets-scams-available-now/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"We recently alerted our readers to spam campaigns using the H1N1 vaccination program to prompt recipients to open the mail. And we have frequently mentioned that crooks love to take advantage of news, disasters, and other events. Now that the final draw for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa next year has taken place, it is time to remind you that sports events are no exception to the rule. I’ve already found some examples. The first is a fake lottery. In this case, the source claims the recipient has won a large sum of money from the South African Football Association. After contacting the lottery manager, the victim of the scam will be asked to pay “processing fees” or “transfer charges” so that the winnings can be distributed. Don’t expect to ever see a payment.\n","tags":["Phishing","scam","spam","Security"],"title":"FIFA World Cup Tickets Scams Available Now"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T00:42:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/critical-adobe-flash-update/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s the second Tuesday of the month and there are important updates being released.\nFrom Microsoft, of course, but also from Adobe.\nThere’s a critical security issue in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.32.18 and earlier.\nIt’s important that organizations deploy these updates before the Christmas holiday reduces IT staffing. Fortunately, this patch cycle is as early as can be landing on the 8th so there’s still time to test and deploy.\n","tags":["Adobe","Patch Tuesday","Updates"],"title":"Critical Adobe Flash Update"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-12-09T00:34:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/12/09/new-social-engineering-technique-use-microsoft-support-to-sell-rogues/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Sunbelt analyst Adam Thomas came across this ugly new social engineering technique when he analyzed the DefenceLab rogue security product. It does the usual scare-ware stuff: a fake scan and fake “Windows Security Center” alert:\nThen it directs the potential victim to a Microsoft Support page, but injects html code into the page in his or her browser to make it appear as though Microsoft is suggesting the purchase of the rogue. This is the real Microsoft page:\n","tags":["alert","rogue software","Security"],"title":"New social engineering technique: use Microsoft support to sell rogues"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-04-01T09:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/04/01/conficker-worm-patch-now-not-later/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Conficker (also known as Downadup) has dominated security headlines for months. Today — April 1, 2009 — media coverage peaks because variant Conficker.C is programmed to check a larger set of domain names for update instructions. The worm has not melted the internet overnight, but the attention is useful if it pushes lagging patches out the door.\nDefense is mostly discipline, not mystery.\nHow It Spreads Conficker exploits failures administrators have warned about for years:\n","tags":["Conficker","Security","Windows","Malware","Patching"],"title":"Conficker Worm — Patch Now, Not Later"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2009-02-08T00:11:31Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/02/08/matisyahu/","readingTime":13,"section":"posts","summary":" Matisyahu (born Matthew Paul Miller, June 30, 1979) is an American reggae musician.\nKnown for blending traditional Jewish themes with Reggae, rock and hip hop sounds, Matisyahu is most recognizable for his single “King Without a Crown”, which was a surprise Top 40 hit, and for being an orthodox Jew. Since 2004, he has released two studio albums as well as one live album, two remix CDs and one DVD featuring a live concert, and a number of interviews. Through his short career, Matisyahu has teamed up with some of the biggest names in reggae production including Bill Laswell and duo Sly \u0026 Robbie.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Matisyahu"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-15T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/15/passwords-used-by-the-conficker-worm/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"It’s not possible to emphasise enough the importance of using sensible passwords on your network.\nNot just on the areas of your network that you don’t want your users to traipse through, but also on the default network shares that are present on installations of commonly used operating systems. The Windows versions Conficker targeted — NT, 2000, XP, and 2003 — are all end of life and no longer receive security updates. The lesson still applies to any machine with open shares today.\n","tags":["Safety Tips","Password","Malware","conficker","Security"],"title":"Passwords used by the Conficker worm"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-14T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/14/tips-to-help-keep-your-passwords-secret/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Treat passwords with as much care as the information they protect. For how to make them strong — and why a manager should generate them — see Passwords. These tips are about keeping secrets secret day to day.\n1. Never provide your password over e-mail Phishing messages pretend to be a bank, a shop, or a social network and ask you to “confirm” your login. Legitimate services do not need your password by email. Learn how to spot phishing.\n","tags":["Safety Tips","Password","Security"],"title":"5 tips to help keep your passwords secret"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:58:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/10-tips-for-safe-instant-messaging/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Communicating by using an instant messaging (IM) program has some of the same security and privacy risks as e-mail, but there are a few dangers that are unique to IM. The original 2009 version of this guide was written for desktop IM clients like AIM and MSN Messenger. The same principles apply to modern apps — WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, Slack, and iMessage.\n1. Never open files or links from strangers Never open pictures, download files, or click links in messages from people you don’t know. If they come from someone you do know, confirm with the sender that the message (and its attachments) is trustworthy. If it’s not, close the conversation.\n","tags":["Safety Tips","Instant Messaging","Security"],"title":"10 tips for safe instant messaging"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:56:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/11-tips-for-social-networking-safety/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Social networking Web sites like Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, and Threads are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.\nAs the popularity of these social sites grows, so do the risks of using them. Hackers, spammers, virus writers, identity thieves, and other criminals follow the traffic.\nRead these tips to help protect yourself when you use social networks.\n","tags":["Safety Tips","social networks","Security"],"title":"11 tips for social networking safety"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:56:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/tfc/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"TFC (Temp File Cleaner) was a small utility that cleared out temp folders for all user accounts — temp, browser caches, Java, and system temp directories — across every profile on a Windows machine. It showed the amount removed for each location and required a reboot afterward.\nThe original 2009 version of this page recommended TFC for routine maintenance. TFC is no longer maintained and is not suitable for Windows 8.1, 10, or 11. On modern systems it can destabilize things by force-stopping Explorer and other running apps.\n","tags":["Apps","Windows Apps"],"title":"TFC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:55:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/passwords/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Strong passwords still matter, but the way we handle them has changed since this post first ran in 2009. The default today is simple: let a password manager create a unique random password for every site, turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever it is offered, and use a passkey when a service supports one.\nWhat actually makes a password strong Attackers guess and crack passwords with dictionaries, leaked lists, and raw computing power. Strength comes from:\n","tags":["Safety Tips","Password","Security"],"title":"Passwords"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:51:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/how-to-choose-a-firewall/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Three basic types of firewalls are available for you to choose from:\nSoftware firewalls (built into your OS) Hardware routers Wireless routers To determine which type of firewall is best for you, answer these questions:\nHow many computers will use the firewall? What operating system do you use? (Windows, macOS, or Linux.) That’s it. You are now ready to think about what type of firewall you want to use. There are several options, each with its own pros and cons.\n","tags":["Guide","Firewall","Security"],"title":"How to Choose a Firewall"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/check-for-windows-updates/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Three steps to keep Windows fast, stable, and secure. The original 2009 version of this guide recommended FileHippo Update Checker (later renamed AppManager) and the Secunia Online Scanner. Both are gone — FileHippo retired its updater, and Secunia’s consumer tools shut down years ago. Here is what still works.\n1. Patch Windows and Microsoft products Turn on automatic updates and verify nothing is pending. Reboot when prompted — pending restarts leave patches half-applied.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Windows","how to","Updates","maintenance","Guide"],"title":"Check for Windows Updates"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/spam-checklist/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"The original 2009 version of this checklist recommended Symantec Brightmail and the Symantec State of Spam site. Brightmail is now part of Broadcom’s enterprise portfolio and is not a practical choice for home users. The do/don’t advice below is still sound.\nDo Unsubscribe from legitimate mailings that you no longer want to receive. When signing up to receive mail, verify what additional items you are opting into at the same time. De-select items you do not want to receive. Be selective about the Web sites where you register your email address. Avoid publishing your email address on the Internet. Consider alternate options — for example, use a separate address when signing up for mailing lists, get multiple addresses for multiple purposes, or look into disposable address services. Using directions provided by your mail administrators, report missed spam if you have an option to do so. Delete all spam. Avoid clicking on suspicious links in email or IM messages as these may be links to spoofed websites. We suggest typing web addresses directly in to the browser rather than relying upon links within your messages. Always be sure that your operating system is up-to-date with the latest updates, and employ a comprehensive security suite. For organizations, use a reputable e-mail security gateway (Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Google Workspace spam filtering, or a dedicated provider such as Proofpoint or Mimecast) to filter spam before it reaches inboxes. Keep up to date on recent spam trends — the Anti-Phishing Working Group publishes quarterly reports on phishing and spam activity. Do not Open unknown email attachments. These attachments could infect your computer. Reply to spam. Typically the sender’s email address is forged, and replying may only result in more spam. Fill out forms in messages that ask for personal or financial information or passwords. A reputable company is unlikely to ask for your personal details via email. When in doubt, contact the company in question via an independent, trusted mechanism, such as a verified telephone number, or a known Internet address that you type into a new browser window (do not click or cut and paste from a link in the message). Buy products or services from spam messages. Open spam messages. Forward any virus warnings that you receive through email. These are often hoaxes. ","tags":["spam","Security","Guide"],"title":"Checklist: Protecting your business, your employees and your customers"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/cleanup-windows-hard-disk/","readingTime":5,"section":"posts","summary":"Freeing up disk space keeps Windows responsive and gives updates room to install. The original 2009 version of this guide recommended Auslogics BoostSpeed and CCleaner for the job. Today you rarely need either — Windows 10 and 11 ship with cleanup tools that are safer than third-party “boosters” and registry cleaners. Here is the modern workflow.\nWhy cleanup Over time Windows accumulates files you can safely remove:\nTemporary files from apps and the system Browser caches and downloaded program files Windows Update leftovers, WinSxS component-store bloat, and orphaned installer patches The Recycle Bin Delivery Optimization cache and old restore points Apps and games you no longer use Tip: On modern browsers the cache is capped and self-managing, so the biggest wins are usually Windows Update leftovers (especially WinSxS and the Installer folder), the Downloads folder, and unused applications — not the browser cache.\n","tags":["Microsoft","Windows","how to","cleanup","maintenance","Guide"],"title":"Cleanup Windows Hard Disk"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/firewall/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"A firewall is an application which controls network traffic to and from a computer, permitting or denying communications based on a security policy.\nA personal firewall differs from a conventional firewall in terms of scale. Personal firewalls are typically designed for use by end-users. As a result, a personal firewall will usually protect only the computer on which it is installed.\nMany personal firewalls are able to control network traffic by prompting the user each time a connection is attempted and adapting security policy accordingly. Personal firewalls may also provide some level of intrusion detection, allowing the software to terminate or block connectivity where it suspects an intrusion is being attempted.\n","tags":["Guide","Firewall","Security"],"title":"Firewall"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/handle-suspicious-email/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"There are good reasons to be suspicious of e-mail.\nSome e-mail messages might be phishing scams, some might carry viruses. Images in spam e-mail might turn out to be pornographic, or to include Web beacons, which can be adapted to secretly send a message back to the sender.\nFollow these guidelines to help protect yourself when suspicious mail shows up in your Inbox.\n1. Do not respond — and don’t open junk mail If an e-mail looks suspicious, don’t risk your personal information by responding to it. Delete junk e-mail messages without opening them. Sometimes even opening spam can alert spammers or put an unprotected computer at risk. Don’t reply to e-mail unless you’re certain that the message comes from a legitimate source. This includes not responding to messages that offer an option to “Remove me from your list.” Do not “unsubscribe” unless the mail is from a known or trusted sender. Use the junk mail tools in your e-mail program. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and most providers let you mark messages as spam or phishing, which trains their filters and blocks the sender. 2. Approach links with caution Links in phishing e-mail messages often take you to phony sites that encourage you to transmit personal or financial information to con artists. Avoid clicking a link in an e-mail message unless you are sure of the real target address, or URL.\n","tags":["Phishing","Email","how to","Security","Guide"],"title":"How to handle suspicious e-mail"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/phishing-emails/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"A few clues can help you spot fraudulent e-mail messages or links within them.\nWhat does a phishing e-mail look like? Phishing e-mail messages are designed to steal your identity. They ask for personal data, or direct you to Web sites or phone numbers to call where they ask you to provide personal data.\nPhishing e-mail messages take a number of forms:\nThey might appear to come from your bank or financial institution, a company you regularly do business with, such as Microsoft, or from your social networking site. They might appear to be from someone you know. Spear phishing is a targeted form of phishing in which an e-mail message might look like it comes from your employer, or from a colleague who might send an e-mail message to everyone in the company, such as the head of human resources or IT. They might ask you to make a phone call. Phone phishing (vishing) scams direct you to call a customer support phone number. A person or an audio response unit waits to take your account number, personal identification number, password, or other valuable personal data. They might include official-looking logos and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites, and they might include convincing details about your personal information that scammers found on your social networking pages. They might include links to spoofed Web sites where you are asked to enter personal information. To make these messages look even more legitimate, scam artists may place a link that appears to go to the legitimate Web site, but actually takes you to a phony scam site or a pop-up window that looks exactly like the official site.\n","tags":["Phishing","Email","how to","Security","Guide"],"title":"How to recognize phishing e-mails or links"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/phishing/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) is a type of online identity theft. It uses e-mail, text messages, and fraudulent Web sites that are designed to steal your personal data or information such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other information.\nCon artists might send millions of fraudulent messages with links to fraudulent Web sites that appear to come from Web sites you trust, like your bank or credit card company, and request that you provide personal information. Criminals can use this information for many different types of fraud, such as to steal money from your account, to open new accounts in your name, or to obtain official documents using your identity.\n","tags":["Phishing","Security","Guide"],"title":"Phishing"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/sandbox/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs. It is often used to execute untested code, or untrusted programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers and untrusted users.\nI recommend Sandboxie for daily use on Windows — the open-source fork maintained by the Sandboxie-Plus community after the original project was discontinued.\nThe sandbox typically provides a tightly-controlled set of resources for guest programs to run in, such as scratch space on disk and memory. Network access, the ability to inspect the host system or read from input devices are usually disallowed or heavily restricted. In this sense, sandboxes are a specific example of virtualization.\n","tags":["sandbox"],"title":"Sandbox"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/spam/","readingTime":1,"section":"posts","summary":"Spam is any kind of unwanted online communication.\nCommon types of spam The most common form is unwanted e-mail. You can also get:\nText message spam — sometimes called smishing Instant message spam — sometimes known as spim Social networking spam Harmless vs. dangerous spam Some spam is annoying but harmless. However, some spam is part of an identity theft scam or another kind of fraud. Identity theft spam is often called a phishing scam.\n","tags":["spam","Security","Guide"],"title":"Spam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2009-01-13T23:50:43+03:30","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2009/01/13/what-to-do-if-youve-responded-to-a-phishing-scam/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":"If you suspect that you’ve responded to a phishing scam with personal or financial information, take these steps to minimize any damage.\nStep 1: Report the incident Contact the following authorities:\nYour credit card company, if you have given your credit card information. The sooner an organization knows your account may have been compromised, the easier it will be for them to help protect you. The company that you believe was forged. Remember to contact the organization directly, not through the e-mail message you received. In the United States, report identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov and file a fraud report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. You can also report the phishing scam to the Anti-Phishing Working Group by forwarding the phishing e-mail message as an attachment to reportphishing@apwg.org.\n","tags":["Safety Tips","Phishing","Security","Guide"],"title":"What to do if you've responded to a phishing scam"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2008-12-11T14:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/12/11/dreamweaver-cs4-and-maintaining-real-websites/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"After Adobe absorbed Macromedia, Dreamweaver remained the default tool for many small teams building corporate sites, portfolios, and internal portals. Dreamweaver CS4 adds better CSS tooling, Live View powered by WebKit, and closer ties to the Adobe stack — but the hard part is still the same: keeping sites maintainable after launch.\nWhat CS4 Improved Live View renders pages with a WebKit engine — closer to Safari and Chrome than the old Design view approximation Stronger CSS panel workflows for designers who do not want to hand-write every rule Better code hinting for PHP and JavaScript Integration hooks for Photoshop comps and Bridge asset management Spry framework widgets for menus and form validation — use sparingly Subversion integration for teams finally moving off shared folders Live View reduces “upload and pray” cycles. You still need to test in IE7 and Firefox 3 — WebKit is not the whole audience.\n","tags":["Dreamweaver","Web Development","HTML","CSS","Adobe"],"title":"Dreamweaver CS4 and Maintaining Real Websites"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-11-14T11:39:36Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/11/14/johnny-cash/","readingTime":33,"section":"posts","summary":" Johnny Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was a Grammy Award-winning American country singer-songwriter. Cash is widely considered to be one of the most influential American musicians of the 20th century.\nCash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice, the “freight train” sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, his demeanor, and his dark clothing, which earned him the nickname “The Man in Black”. He traditionally started his concerts with the introduction “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Johnny Cash"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2008-10-21T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/10/21/miley-cyrus-hacker-gets-a-visit-from-the-fbi/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" A hacker who posted candid photographs of Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus on the internet was the subject of an FBI raid yesterday.\n19-year-old Josh Holly, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, boasted that he had broken into the Disney teen queen’s email account and stolen photos - including, according to media reports, pictures of her baring her midriff in the shower, and “posing provactively” in her underwear and swimsuit.\n","tags":["celeb","hack","leak","Security"],"title":"Miley Cyrus hacker gets a visit from the FBI"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2008-10-17T21:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/10/17/ollydbg-and-learning-reverse-engineering-safely/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"If Sysinternals shows you what is running, OllyDbg shows you what a program is thinking — one x86 instruction at a time. In 2008 it is the standard debugger for 32-bit Windows binaries: unpack a crackme, trace a malware sample in a lab, or understand why an installer behaves oddly when the vendor will not answer support calls.\nOllyDbg 1.10 is the version most people use. It is freeware, debugger-only (no disassembler license debates), and extensible with plugins.\n","tags":["OllyDbg","Reverse Engineering","Security","Windows"],"title":"OllyDbg and Learning Reverse Engineering Safely"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-09-27T11:09:48Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/09/27/korn/","readingTime":28,"section":"posts","summary":" Korn, occasionally typeset as KoЯn or KoRn, is an American rock band from Bakersfield, California, and is often credited with popularizing the nu metal genre. Along with other bands at the time, they have also inspired many nu metal and alternative metal bands throughout the mid 1990s and early 2000s.\nThe band’s catalogue consists of nine consecutive debuts in the top ten of the Billboard 200, including a compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol.1, and their untitled eighth album, released on July 31, 2007. To date, Korn has sold over 30 million albums worldwide, including 16.5 in the U.S., whilst earning six Grammy nominations—two of which they have won.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"KoЯn"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2008-09-03T19:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/09/03/google-chrome-a-fresh-browser-engine/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Google Chrome arrived yesterday as a Windows beta with a comic explaining multi-process tabs and a reputation for speed. Another browser is the last thing some people wanted. For web developers and security folks, it is a big signal: the rendering engine wars are back.\nMac and Linux versions do not exist yet. This is a Windows-only beta — but the design choices are worth studying regardless of platform.\nWhat Is Different Separate processes per tab — one crash does not take down everything Sandboxing ambitions — harder for web content to touch the system V8 JavaScript engine — fast enough to change how web apps feel in the browser Minimal UI — the address bar doubles as search, fitting Google’s habits Incognito mode — private browsing without digging through menus Silent auto-update — patches ship without a user-facing version bump Chrome uses WebKit for rendering — the same engine family as Safari — with Google’s own V8 replacing JavaScriptCore for script execution.\n","tags":["Google Chrome","Browsers","Web Development","Security"],"title":"Google Chrome — A Fresh Browser Engine"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-07-16T12:53:34Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/07/16/kid-rock/","readingTime":24,"section":"posts","summary":" Robert James Richie (born January 17, 1971 in Romeo, Michigan), known by his stage name Kid Rock, is an American musician and actor. He has sold over 23 million albums since the release of his debut album Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast in 1990.\nJive Records released him from his contract in 1991, and in 1992 he signed with Continuum Records. He released 1993’s The Polyfuze Method and the 1994 EP Fire It Up!. Continuum Records didn’t have the resources to push him and eventually went bankrupt. Kid Rock then started his own label in 1994 called Top Dog Records. After releasing demo tapes and working as a janitor to pay for studio fees, he released Early Mornin Stoned Pimp in 1996, which became a local smash hit. He held a special showcase concert, with only Atlantic Records showing up; they signed them to a record contract.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Kid Rock"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-07-11T23:31:34Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/07/11/avril-lavigne/","readingTime":20,"section":"posts","summary":" Avril Lavigne Whibley (born September 27, 1984), better known by her birth name of Avril Lavigne (pronounced /ˈævrɨl ləˈviːn/), is a Canadian Grammy award-nominated rock singer, musician, fashion designer and actress. In 2006, Canadian Business Magazine ranked her the seventh most powerful Canadian in Hollywood.\nLavigne’s debut album, Let Go, was released in 2002. Over 16 million copies were sold worldwide and it was certified six times platinum in the United States. Her second and third albums, Under My Skin (2004) sold 8 million copies and The Best Damn Thing (2007) currently over 5 million copies sold respectively, reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. Lavigne has scored six number one songs worldwide to date and a total of eleven top ten hits, including “Complicated”, “Sk8er Boi”, “I’m With You”, “My Happy Ending”, and “Girlfriend” which became #1 hits in the ARC Top 40. In December 2007, Lavigne was ranked at #7 in the Forbes “Top 20 Earners Under 25”, with an annual earnings of $12 million. Currently, Avril Lavigne has sold about 30 million albums worldwide.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Avril Lavigne"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-07-03T14:34:51Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/07/03/coldplay/","readingTime":16,"section":"posts","summary":" Coldplay are an alternative rock band formed in London, England in 1997. The group comprises vocalist/pianist/guitarist Chris Martin, lead guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Will Champion. Coldplay have sold 32.5 million albums, and are also known for their hit singles, such as “Yellow”, “The Scientist”, “Speed of Sound”, “Fix You”, “Viva la Vida” and the Grammy Award-winning “Clocks”.\nColdplay achieved worldwide fame with the release of their single “Yellow”, followed by their debut album, Parachutes (2000), which was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Its follow-up, A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002), was named _NME’_s Album of the Year. Their next release, X\u0026Y (2005), received a generally positive reception. The band’s fourth studio album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008), was produced by Brian Eno and released again to largely favourable reviews. All of Coldplay’s albums have enjoyed great commercial success.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Coldplay"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-07-03T13:22:18Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/07/03/fergie/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":" Stacy Ann Ferguson (born March 27, 1975), better known by her stage name Fergie, is an American pop/R\u0026B singer-songwriter, actress, and rapper. She is a former member of the kids’ television series Kids Incorporated, and the girl group Wild Orchid. Ferguson was also a co-host of the television show Great Pretenders. She is currently a vocalist for the hip hop/pop group the Black Eyed Peas, as well as a solo artist, releasing her debut album, The Dutchess, in 2006. The album has so far spawned three U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number one singles and five Top 5 hits, making The Dutchess the seventh album from a female artist to spawn five Top 5 hits.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Fergie"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-06-11T17:55:16Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/06/11/peter-heppner/","readingTime":2,"section":"posts","summary":" Peter Heppner (born 1967 in Hamburg) was the lead singer for the German electronica/synth pop band Wolfsheim, and has collaborated with many other electronic music acts, such as Paul van Dyk, Schiller, and Goethes Erben.\nAlthough he’s been active in Wolfsheim since 1987, his first commercial success was in 1991 releasing the single “The sparrows and the nightingales”. In 1998 he had a big charts success doing a song with 80’s star Joachim Witt, releasing the single “Die Flut”. In the years following, his notability as a singer increased. Collaborating with the electronic music project Schiller, he reached charts positions in 2004 with the songs “Dream of you” and “Leben… I feel you”. In the same year, he released the song “Wir sind wir” together with Paul van Dyk. Although the song was controversial because of its message (which could be interpreted as nationalist), the artists recorded another version together with the Filmorchester Babelsberg for the Day of German Unity on October 3rd, 2005 in Potsdam. A more recent project with Mila Mar and Kim Sanders from Culture Beat spawned the single “Aus Gold”, intended to support Afghanian poorhouses together with the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Peter Heppner"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-06-01T17:49:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/06/01/james-blunt/","readingTime":15,"section":"posts","summary":" James Blunt (born James Hillier Blount, February 22, 1974) is a British singer-songwriter whose debut album, Back to Bedlam, and single releases — especially the number one hit “You’re Beautiful” — brought him to fame in 2005. His style is a mix of pop, rock and folk. Along with vocals, James Blunt performs a variety of instruments, including piano and guitar. He is signed to Linda Perry’s independent American label Custard Records. Blunt won two BRIT Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards, and was nominated for five Grammy Awards in 2006. Blunt subsequently released his second album, All The Lost Souls, in 2007; this album was certified gold within its first week of release. The first single from his second album, “1973”, was Blunt’s first Global Number 1 in October 2007, beating “You’re Beautiful” which peaked at Number 2 in the United World Chart.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"James Blunt"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-05-18T12:06:34Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/05/18/carlos-santana/","readingTime":25,"section":"posts","summary":" Carlos Augusto Alves Santana (born July 20, 1947) is a Grammy Award-winning Mexican-American Latin rock musician and guitarist. He became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which created a highly successful blend of salsa, rock, blues, and jazz fusion. Their sound featured his melodic, blues based guitar lines set against Latin percussion such as timbales and congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades, and experienced a sudden resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Rolling Stone also named Santana number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Carlos Santana"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-05-04T07:36:58Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/05/04/tiesto-one-of-the-worlds-most-famous-trance-djs/","readingTime":38,"section":"posts","summary":" Tiësto (IPA: /tiɛsto/; born Tijs Verwest (IPA: /tɛɪs vɛɹʋɛst/) on January 17, 1969 in Breda, North Brabant, Netherlands) is one of the world’s most famous trance DJs and producers in the electronic dance music scene. Although he has used many aliases in the past, he is best known for his work as DJ Tiësto. On his latest productions, however, he has dropped the “DJ” label and he is now known simply as “Tiësto”, an alias which is an Italian twist on his childhood nickname.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Tiësto"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-05-01T08:22:01Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/05/01/snoop-dogg/","readingTime":39,"section":"posts","summary":" Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr. (born October 20, 1972), better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg), is an American rapper, singer, record producer, and actor. Snoop is best known as an MC in the West Coast hip hop scene, and for being one of producer Dr. Dre’s most notable protégés. His catch phrase is “-izzle,” a style of slang invented by Frankie Smith and The Gap Band in the early eighties, and popularized in part by fellow rapper E-40.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Snoop Dogg"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-04-30T13:26:51Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/04/30/armin-van-buuren-voted-number-one-dj/","readingTime":14,"section":"posts","summary":" Armin van Buuren (born December 25, 1976) is a trance music producer. He was born in Leiden, Netherlands, but who grew up in Koudekerk aan den Rijn. In 2007, he was voted number one DJ in DJ Mag’s annual Top 100 vote.\nBiography Armin van Buuren pursued his career as a professional musician despite the promise of a career in law in his native country, the Netherlands, where he completed his law degree in 2004. Armin started working as a DJ in a local night club called Nexus, finished high school in 1995 and went on to university to study law. Meanwhile, he moved his studio equipment from his bedroom to a ‘real’ studio. The first tracks he produced in his new studio were, among others, tracks like “Touch Me” and “Communication”. Van Buuren has been quoted as saying, “Don’t be a prisoner of your own style.” He has described his musical style as “liberating, euphoric, uplifting, melodic and energetic.”\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Armin van Buuren"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-04-30T12:21:52Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/04/30/super-producer-timbaland/","readingTime":12,"section":"posts","summary":" Timothy Z. Mosley (born March 10, 1971), better known by his stage name Timbaland, is an American record producer, composer, rapper, and singer. Primarily known for his work in urban pop, Timbaland has produced albums and singles for a number of artists from the mid-1990s to the present day.\nTimbaland’s first production work was Ginuwine…the Bachelor for Ginuwine, in 1996; the album was both a commercial and critical success. He was later contacted by Aaliyah to help produce her second album, One in a Million, which went on to sell over two million copies worldwide. In 2000, Timbaland produced several hit songs including Ludacris’ “Rollout (My Business)”, and contributed three singles to Aaliyah’s self-titled third album. Embracing an international audience, he helped produce three tracks for Japanese Pop star Utada Hikaru’s debut English album, Exodus.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Timbaland"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-04-27T13:01:16Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/04/27/serj-tankian-my-favorite-artist-favorite-person/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":" Serj Tankian (Armenian: Սերժ Թանգեան) (born August 21, 1967 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a Lebanese-born Armenian-American singer, songwriter, poet, activist, and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative metal band System of a Down. In 2002, Serj and Tom Morello co-founded a non-profit political activist organization, Axis of Justice. During his entertainment career, he released five albums with System of a Down, one with Arto Tunçboyacıyan (Serart), and also recently a solo album, Elect the Dead, on October 23, 2007.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Serj Tankian"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-04-27T11:12:55Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/04/27/astrix-a-psychedelic-trance-dj-and-producer-specialising-in-the-sub-genre-of-full-on-psychedelic-trance/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":" Astrix (‘Avi Shmailov – אסטריקס) is a Psychedelic Trance DJ and producer specialising in the sub-genre of Full On Psychedelic Trance.\nHe was born in Russia in 1981 and grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel. He began recording music under the name Astrix in 1997, sometimes misconceived to be taken from the “Asterix” comic books. An interview on UK clubbing website Harderfaster.net revealed the name was chosen for simply sounding good, and not directly influenced by anything in particular.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Astrix"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-04-15T20:52:39Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/04/15/infected-mushroom/","readingTime":6,"section":"posts","summary":" Infected Mushroom – Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani (aka Duvdev) – has been the leading group within the global psy-trance scene for nearly a decade. Incorporating pumping, bad-ass grooves and infectious melodies and live instruments and vocals into their songs, they’ve performed live – a feat that many of their DJ peers aspire to accomplish – for well over a million people around the globe.\nThe band’s energetic live show has triumphed at some of the world’s biggest and most important music festivals (OMIX Festival in Mexico, Miami’s Ultra Festival, Tribe in Sao Paulo, among countless others), and they continue to regularly sell-out top clubs such as the Brixton Academy in London, Toronto’s Koolhaus at the Government, and Avalon in New York and Los Angeles. Their success as an electronic music band on the global concert circuit has translated into record sales in excess of 150,000 albums over the course of six acclaimed independent albums. Not bad for two guys from Haifa who started producing music mostly to escape boredom.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Infected Mushroom"},{"categories":["Cozy Corner"],"date":"2008-04-14T20:45:15Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2008/04/14/tarja-turunen-nightwish-vocalist-1996-2005/","readingTime":9,"section":"posts","summary":" The brightest star of the Finnish rock scene, the soprano singer Tarja Turunen has in a short time become one of the most well-known Finnish faces in the world of music.\nTurunen, who was born in the city of Kitee, Finland, started her musical studies at the age of six, and moved to study classical singing at the age 18 at the Sibelius Academy of Kuopio city.\nAt the same time Tarja’s classmate Tuomas Holopainen was starting his acoustical project, and invited Turunen to join the band. Tarja said yes to the invitation, and thus Nightwish was born.\n","tags":["Music"],"title":"Tarja Turunen"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2007-09-18T11:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2007/09/18/building-internal-web-tools-on-windows/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"By late 2007, a lot of “enterprise” work still happens on small internal web apps: timesheets, inventory lookups, simple ticketing, phone directories. You do not always need Java or .NET. Sometimes you need PHP, MySQL, and a Windows server that the IT team can actually maintain.\nThat is common in broadcasting, education, and mid-size offices — anywhere IT support sits close to the users and budgets are tight.\nWhy Internal Tools Matter Desktop apps are expensive to deploy. Browser tools win when:\n","tags":["Web Development","PHP","MySQL","Windows","IT Support"],"title":"Building Internal Web Tools on Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2007-02-14T12:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2007/02/14/windows-vista-launch-uac-and-the-first-month/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows Vista launched to retail on January 30, and the usual mix of excitement and complaint followed immediately. Retail boxes promise security, search, and Aero glass. Forums fill with UAC prompt screenshots, driver complaints, and games that stutter on borderline hardware.\nTwo weeks in, both sides look partly right.\nWhat Vista Gets Right User Account Control pushes installers toward proper permissions — even if users click Yes too often Windows Defender bundles baseline anti-spyware awareness BitLocker matters on business laptops with TPM chips (less on home PCs without it) Improved networking UI helps non-experts join Wi-Fi without breaking DNS Windows Search indexes documents faster than XP’s slow companion ReadyBoost offers a flash-drive speed boost on RAM-starved machines — modest, but noticeable What Frustrates People Prompt fatigue — UAC trains some users to click through everything without reading Performance on 512 MB–1 GB RAM systems feels sluggish compared to XP Driver hunting for printers, scanners, and older peripherals Games needing patches before they match XP smoothness Edition confusion — Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate — each with different feature sets The “Vista Capable” vs “Vista Premium Ready” sticker mess does not help. Machines that can run Vista often cannot run Aero, and buyers feel misled.\n","tags":["Windows Vista","UAC","Windows","Security"],"title":"Windows Vista Launch, UAC, and the First Month"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2006-11-08T14:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2006/11/08/sysinternals-suite-for-windows-troubleshooting/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"When a Windows PC feels slow, popup-heavy, or “haunted,” Task Manager is not enough. The Sysinternals Suite from Mark Russinovich answers the question power users actually have: what is running, why, and who started it?\nMicrosoft acquired Sysinternals in July 2006, but the tools remain free, still updated, and still the first thing I reach for on a troubled machine.\nProcess Explorer: Task Manager with X-Ray Vision Process Explorer shows:\n","tags":["Sysinternals","Windows","Troubleshooting","Security"],"title":"Sysinternals Suite for Windows Troubleshooting"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2006-07-19T21:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2006/07/19/twitter-microblogging-and-the-attention-tax/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"In March, a small team launched twttr — a service for posting short status updates. By July it is called Twitter, and the constraint is still strange: 140 characters per post. No rich layouts, no photo albums — just short bursts of text, links, and the occasional SMS reply.\nBloggers compare it to IRC for people who do not want to stay in a channel. That is closer to the truth than it sounds.\n","tags":["Twitter","Social Media","Internet","Productivity"],"title":"Twitter, Microblogging, and the Attention Tax"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2006-02-02T10:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2006/02/02/wmf-exploit-and-the-zero-day-patch-rush/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Early 2006 delivered a rude reminder: a picture was not always safe. A flaw in how Windows handles WMF (Windows Metafile) images allows attackers to run code through crafted files — sometimes simply by viewing them in a browser, image viewer, or Explorer preview pane.\nIt is a classic zero-day moment: exploit code is circulating while users wait for an official fix.\nWhy This Feels Different Previous worms often needed obvious .exe attachments. The WMF issue blurs the line:\n","tags":["Security","Windows","Malware","0-Day"],"title":"WMF Exploit and the Zero-Day Patch Rush"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2006-01-24T13:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2006/01/24/internet-explorer-7-tabs-finally/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Internet Explorer 6 has dominated Windows desktops for years — and for years, users have asked for tabbed browsing. Firefox and Opera shipped tabs long ago. Microsoft showed IE7 briefly in beta form last July, and the public Beta 2 Preview is expected within days.\nIf you maintain websites or support family PCs, this is the moment to pay attention.\nWhat Microsoft Is Promising Based on beta builds and public statements, IE7 is shaping up as a real course correction:\n","tags":["Internet Explorer","Browsers","Windows","Security"],"title":"Internet Explorer 7 — Tabs, Finally"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2005-12-06T15:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2005/12/06/batch-files-vs-autoit-on-windows/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Windows automation in 2005 is a two-tool world for many of us: batch files for command-line friendly tasks, and AutoIt when the job requires clicking through GUI dialogs.\nNeither is “better.” They solve different problems, and most experienced admins use both.\nWhen Batch Files Win Batch is ideal when:\nPrograms expose command-line switches — xcopy, robocopy on XP Pro, net use, installers with /silent or /S You schedule tasks with Task Scheduler You chain simple steps: map drive, copy logs, start service, exit You want zero extra runtime installed on the target machine Example — nightly log backup:\n","tags":["AutoIt","Batch","Windows","Automation"],"title":"Batch Files vs AutoIt on Windows"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2005-08-03T20:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2005/08/03/sony-bmg-rootkit-and-why-trust-matters/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Music labels are fighting piracy with software, not just lawyers. Sony BMG and other majors now ship copy-protected CDs that install player software, limit ripping, and sometimes phone home to verify licenses. The packaging rarely explains what happens when you insert the disc into a Windows PC.\nThat should worry anyone who manages desktops — including your own.\nAutorun Is the Real Entry Point Most of the friction starts with Autorun. Insert a CD, and Windows offers to launch an installer — often a custom media player with DRM components. Users click OK because the dialog looks official and the CD came from a retail shelf, not a download site.\n","tags":["Security","Rootkit","DRM","Windows"],"title":"Sony BMG Rootkit and Why Trust Matters"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2005-05-18T11:20:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2005/05/18/sandboxie-for-testing-software-you-do-not-trust/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"Every power user eventually downloads something questionable: a codec pack from a forum signature, a “speed up your PC” utility, an installer from a mirror you do not fully trust, or shareware from an old CD-ROM whose publisher disappeared years ago.\nIn 2005, full virtual machines are possible — Microsoft Virtual PC and VMware both exist — but they are heavy on typical hardware. A Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM struggles to run a guest OS smoothly while you also browse and download. Sandboxie offers a lighter idea: run the program in a disposable sandbox and throw the changes away if things go wrong.\n","tags":["Sandboxie","Security","Windows","Testing"],"title":"Sandboxie for Testing Software You Do Not Trust"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2005-02-10T17:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2005/02/10/firefox-1-0-and-the-second-browser-on-your-pc/","readingTime":3,"section":"posts","summary":"For years, Internet Explorer 6 was the default and often the only browser on Windows machines. Then Firefox 1.0 arrived in November 2004 with tabbed browsing, integrated pop-up blocking, and a community that cared about web standards. Three months later, the conversation has moved from “have you heard of it?” to “should I switch?”\nThe answer for most people is simpler: install it alongside IE and use both.\nWhy a Second Browser Helps Keeping Firefox next to IE is useful even if you do not switch full time:\n","tags":["Firefox","Browsers","Windows","Security"],"title":"Firefox 1.0 and the Second Browser on Your PC"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2004-11-02T14:45:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2004/11/02/from-frontpage-to-hand-written-html/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"My first websites did not start in a text editor. They started with Microsoft FrontPage 2003, CoffeeCup HTML Editor, and a lot of trial and error in Internet Explorer 6. That was normal in the early 2000s: visual editors lowered the barrier, and the web was still small enough that a personal page or a company brochure site could ship in a weekend.\nHere in late 2004, the tools are better — but the habits matter more than the brand on the box.\n","tags":["Web Development","HTML","FrontPage","CoffeeCup"],"title":"From FrontPage to Hand-Written HTML"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2004-09-21T19:15:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2004/09/21/mydoom-email-worms-and-backups-that-actually-help/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"If you run support for a home network or a small office, 2004 has been a constant lesson in how fast email malware spreads once one person clicks the wrong attachment.\nMydoom was the headline name, but it lived in the same noisy ecosystem as Bagle and Netsky. Different family, same outcome: crowded mail queues, angry contacts, and half a day lost to cleanup.\nWhat We Saw in Early 2004 Mydoom.A appeared in January and spread faster than most AV vendors could ship signatures. Variants targeted high-profile domains — including SCO and Microsoft — with DDoS traffic from infected bots. Mydoom.B followed within days with tweaked behavior. By spring, IT forums were full of the same question: “Why is our mail server queueing ten thousand outbound messages?”\n","tags":["Security","Malware","Email","Windows","Backup"],"title":"Mydoom, Email Worms, and Backups That Actually Help"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2004-05-27T18:30:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2004/05/27/getting-started-with-autoit-for-windows-automation/","readingTime":8,"section":"posts","summary":"If you spend a lot of time on Windows machines, you probably have a few jobs that are boring enough to be annoying but too small to justify writing a full application. Clicking through installers, copying log files, filling out the same dialog boxes, starting a group of tools every morning, or checking whether a window appeared correctly are all good examples.\nThat is exactly where AutoIt is useful.\nAutoIt is a small Windows scripting language designed for automating the graphical user interface. It can run programs, wait for windows, send keystrokes, click buttons, work with files, show message boxes, read and write simple configuration files, and compile scripts into standalone executables. The syntax is BASIC-like, which makes it approachable even if you do not think of yourself as a programmer.\n","tags":["AutoIt","Windows","Automation","Scripting","Productivity"],"title":"Getting Started with AutoIt for Windows Automation"},{"categories":["TechBlog"],"date":"2004-03-14T16:00:00Z","permalink":"https://omid.dev/2004/03/14/building-small-utilities-with-visual-basic-6/","readingTime":4,"section":"posts","summary":"Most useful software in a small office is not a big platform. It is a tiny internal tool that removes one repeated pain: renaming files, collecting form data, creating a daily folder tree, or checking whether a service is alive.\nIn 2004, Visual Basic 6 is still one of the fastest ways to build that kind of utility on Windows 2000/XP.\nWhere VB6 Still Wins If the job needs a GUI and needs to ship quickly, VB6 remains hard to beat:\n","tags":["Visual Basic","Windows","Programming","Productivity"],"title":"Building Small Utilities with Visual Basic 6"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/about-me/","readingTime":2,"section":"","summary":"I am Omid Farhang, a Frontend Software Architect and Senior Frontend Engineer with over 10 years of experience in designing and developing complex web applications and leading high-performing teams.\nMy journey in technology has been defined by a unique blend of frontend artistry and backend stability. While I specialize in architecting scalable frontend solutions, implementing Nx Monorepos, and Micro-frontends, my roots as a Linux Administrator give me a deep understanding of the infrastructure that powers modern web applications. This dual perspective allows me to bridge the gap between user experience and system reliability.\n","tags":null,"title":"About Me"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/contact-me/","readingTime":1,"section":"","summary":"I’m open to thoughtful conversations around frontend architecture, Angular platforms, design systems, monorepos, technical leadership, and engineering team growth.\nThe best reasons to reach out are senior frontend or frontend architecture roles, technical consulting, architecture reviews, mentoring, or collaboration on serious engineering problems. If your message is about a specific opportunity, please include the role, expected scope, location or remote policy, and the main problem you want help solving.\n","tags":null,"title":"Contact Me"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/now/","readingTime":1,"section":"","summary":"What I’m focused on right now.","tags":null,"title":"Now"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/privacy-policy/","readingTime":3,"section":"","summary":"Last updated: June 17, 2026\nThis policy describes how omid.dev (operated by Omid Farhang) handles information when you visit the site, use the contact form, or interact with blog features.\nThere is no user registration, no newsletter, and no online store on this site.\nWho is responsible Controller: Omid Farhang\nSite: https://omid.dev/\nContact: hi@omid.dev\nWhat this site collects 1. Website analytics (Matomo) omid.dev uses Matomo, self-hosted at analytics.omid.dev, to understand aggregate traffic (pages viewed, referrers, general device/browser information).\n","tags":null,"title":"Privacy Policy"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/resume/","readingTime":0,"section":"","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Resume"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/resume/print/","readingTime":0,"section":"","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Resume - Omid Farhang (Print Version)"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/terms-of-use/","readingTime":3,"section":"","summary":"Last updated: June 17, 2026\nThese terms apply to your use of omid.dev, a personal website operated by Omid Farhang (blog, resume, portfolio links, and related pages).\nIf you do not agree, please do not use the site.\n1. The site omid.dev is provided for informational and personal branding purposes — articles, resume material, project links, and ways to get in touch. It is not a commercial platform, SaaS product, or social network hosted by me.\n","tags":null,"title":"Terms of Use"},{"categories":null,"date":null,"permalink":"https://omid.dev/uses/","readingTime":1,"section":"","summary":"A list of the hardware, software, and tools I use on a daily basis.","tags":null,"title":"Uses"}]