NOKIA should have merged with GOOGLE : Google CEO

This comes straight after the earlier post news spread across about the merge of Nokia & Microsoft......When asked about Nokia's choice of Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone system, Schmidt said "Google would have loved to see Nokia pick Android instead. Google tried to convince Nokia to choose Android, and it can still make that decision in the future".....(ha ha ha....Google still has hopes of a future revertive action by NOKIA....and who knows...it may just happen..we are just the readers!!!!!)

NOKIA & MICROSOFT : A MERGER TO READ ABOUT

1.    In todays shrinking world when we hear of merger of giants...its part of normal breaking news which hardly puts together rolling eyeballs 7 pop ups ....But this one is slightly different or if not different it is really BIGGGGGGG.This is about merger of fantabulous phone hardware NOKIA and the operating system giant MICROSOFT coming toether to produce and try beating the phones across?

2.    The deal which was in the rumour rounds already went much ahead of the expectations.....in effect, Nokia is handing over its future - in smartphones at least - to Microsoft and Windows Phone 7.  That means Good bye & Happy journey Symbian . So can the combo really become the third horse in the race, giving Apple and Android a run for their money ?I have my doubts....

3.    Crux of the acquisition pointwise listed below :

- Nokia to embrace Windows Phone as its principal smartphone.

- Nokia to contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support.

- Both would closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives .

- Bing would power Nokia’s search services(nobodys guess!!!)

- Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services.

4.    Just to mention,a year earlier when this merger was being talked about, was once declared an april fools rumour. And now about a year later it is on official Microsoft site.Thanks Microsoft site for info

The Gawker case : EXPERIENCING A HACK

1.   A six-letter password in lower-case text takes a hacker's computer just 10 minutes to crack. But make those letters upper-case and it takes 10 hours for it to randomly work out your password. Thus simply upper-casing your password can minimise a hacker's chance of finding out your account.Add numbers and/or symbols to your password and the hacker's computer has to work for 18 days.Despite widespread warning, 50 per cent of people choose a common word or simple key combination for their password.The most used passwords are 123456, password, 12345678, qwerty and abc123. 

2.   I read about the Gawker case recently wherein the subject media firm Gawker urged subscribers to change their passwords after its user database was hacked and more than 1.3 million passwords were stolen.Now imagine some one like Yahoo or Google requesting one fine day on a similar line....won't our heart come out????

3.   The exact Gawker announce ment goes like this 

“Our user databases appear to have been compromised. The passwords were encrypted. But simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute-force attack. You should change your Gawker password and on any other sites on which you’ve used the same passwords. We’re deeply embarrassed by this breach. We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems. And, yes, the irony is not lost on us.”

4.   The problem emanated when Gawker recently launched a multi-site redesign thatthat failed spectacularly, leading visitors to blank pages. The culprit was a misbehaving piece of JavaScript, but when a single line of JavaScript causes your entire suite of sites to fail you no longer have websites, you have, well, nothing.The problem with Gawker’s redesign is that it uses JavaScript to load everything. That means that, not only is there no chance for the site to degrade gracefully in browsers that don’t have JavaScript enabled, the smallest JavaScript typo can crash the entire website.

5.   Now we all have seen it personally as we sometimes tend to have the same password for multiple accounts on the web.....this could be a simple fall like a pack of cards...one point failure leads to the complete fort coming down.....so guys...take care....change ur passwords for better and stronger security.....

MALWARE & AUTORUN : LOVE BIRDS OF PROPOGATION

1.    All the family members of trojans,malware and adwares few of which are mentioned above have one similarity in form of a common propagation method. They all ab"use" the autoplay feature of Autorun, many by creating or manipulating Autorun.inf files on network drives and removable media, so that when a user connects, the malware is automatically executed on their system. Newer operating systems, like Windows Vista and Windows 7, have made changes to the way Autorun is configured (Windows Vista) and how it works by default (Windows 7). These changes appear to have had a significant difference in the ability for autorun-abusing malware to successfully infect these newer operating systems, especially for Windows 7.

2.   More interesting details here

3.  Thanks http://blogs.technet.com & Microsoft Malware Protection Center

INTERNET KILL SWITCH????

1.   Recent events in Egypt and the debate over the “Cyber Security and American Competitiveness Act of 2011”, has introduced the cyber world with a yet another jargon term “INTERNET KILL SWITCH”.Whats this all about and what does this mean.....crux in brief as i understood after going through few good informative sites....read onnnnn!!!!!

2.   The term would give US the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant CYBER threat.Thus if the U.S. detected a serious cyberthreat at some point of time, this switch would enable the US President to instantly shut down any infrastructure connected to subject infrastructure.It is not a mandate to be able to shut down the entire Internet but rather authorizes the president to order turning off access to “critical infrastructure” .

3.   Our interest here is to look at just one dimension of the issue – the technical feasibility; the political and policy aspects, we’ll leave to others.

4.   Thanks http://www.switched.com

DATA STORAGE IN BACTERIA : 9,00,000 GB stored in 1 gm of Bacteria

1.  Earlier discussed here & here in my 2009 posts when the study,the concept and experiments were on test bench have now touched reality....

2.  A team of undergraduates and instructors from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has found a way to store a whole lot of data onto living bacteria cells through a process they call “massively parallel bacterial data storage.” And in addition to storing huge amounts of data, they have also figured out how to store and en/decrypt data onto living bacteria cells.

3.  The team has managed to squeeze more than 931,322GB of data onto 1 gram of bacteria (specifically a DH5-alpha strain of E.coli, chosen for its extracted plasmid DNA size) by creating a massively parallel bacterial data storage system. Compared to 1 to 4GB per gram data density of conventional media, the 900,000GB per gram figure the team has returned is genuinely stupefying ie like  to fit the equivalent of 450 2TB hard disks (900TB) on a single gram of E.coli bacteria.

4.   A small ppt straight from the team can be seen here.


5.   Thanks devilsduke.com for the pic

DRIVE BY ATTACK

1.   A small and easy to infer article on DRIVE BY ATTACK here

2.   Thanks http://www.bitesofapple.com

Win32.Hlux : January 2011 " King of worms"

1.   Email-Worm.Win32.Hlux was talk of the E-town in January across the webosphere. This mail worm spreads via emails containing malicious links that prompt users to install a bogus Flash Player, supposedly to view an e-card. The link leads to a dialog window that asks if the user agrees to download a file. Irrespective of the response, the worm sets about to penetrate the system. In addition to propagating via email, Hlux also has bot functionality and adds infected computers to a botnet before connecting to its command center and executing its commands, which are primarily directed at sending pharmaceutical spam.

2.   Kaspersky Lab also detected a Trojan dropper masquerading as a key generator for the company's products. The old adage "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is particularly fitting here as the dropper goes on to install and launch two malicious programs. One of them steals program registration data and passwords for online games. The second is a backdoor that also has keylogger functionality.

3.   Kaspersky Lab also found the mass distribution of malicious short links on Twitter. After a number of redirects, the attention-grabbing links led users to a page promoting a rogue AV program.

4.   Apart from these two hardworkers(?????..i mean mal hardworkers) in january,the other shining star in the E-crime world is AdWare.Win32.WhiteSmoke.a which if clicked, will download a program that demands payment to rectify errors it supposedly detects on the system.

5.   More detailed report on http://www.kaspersky.com

AMD comes up with FUSION

1.   A small mention made earlier at this blog about ISTANBUL,an AMD launch...now comes up with the next gen processor known as FUSION.

2.  The 'Fusion' family will utilize a single-die design that combines multi-core CPU (x86) technology with a powerful DirectX 11-capable graphics and parallel processing engine. The APUs will also include a dedicated high-definition video acceleration block and a high-speed bus that transmits data across differing types of processor cores within the same design and will include power-saving features enabling all-day battery life. 

3.     More about FUSION here

IE users stand vulnerable again : Warning from MICROSOFT

1. This one is a real eye (....or more simply account) opener of so many IE Web browser users across the globe and this one comes straight from the horses mouth....ie MICROSOFT which has warned that the approx 900 million users of its Internet Explorer Web browser are at risk of having their computers commandeered and their personal information stolen by hackers.Microsoft has issued a 'critical' security alert over a newly-disclosed flaw that impacts all versions of the company's Windows operating system, including Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 (R2).

2. The trouble is meant primarily for users of IE only since no other major web browser available supports MHTML files.Microsoft also adds that the bug is inside Windows, (else who is going to use IE??????).Till date/hr as of now no hackers have been reported to exploit the vulnerability. 

3. An attacker could construct an HTML link designed to trigger a malicious script and somehow convince the targeted user to click it. When the user clicks that link, the malicious script would run on the user's computer for the rest of the current Internet Explorer session.Such a script might collect user information (e.g. email), spoof content displayed in the browser, or otherwise interfere with the user's experience.

4. For the otherwise already loosing users at a quick pace,this release would pacen up the loosing percentage of IE users across.

5.   Thanks http://www.smh.com.au