ChewBacca, Tor-enabled PoS malware

Payment card data was stolen during the past three months from several dozen retailers that had their point-of-sale systems infected with a memory-scraping malware program called ChewBacca.

Facebook's Paper iOS app

Facebook wants to be the newspaper for your life: the place where you go to find out if your friends are getting married or having babies or graduating from college, the place you go to read viral news stories.

LibreOffice 4.2

"LibreOffice 4.2 offers two Windows-specific improvements for business users: a simplified custom install dialog to avoid potential mistakes, and the ability to centrally manage and lock-down the configuration with Group Policy Objects via Active Directory,"

Microsoft Security Essentials most popular Anti Virus

OPSWAT claims that 16.3 percent of users are now running Security Essentials on their Windows computers, while avast! Free Antivirus comes second with 13.2 percent.

How I lost my $50,000 Twitter username

"Most websites use email as a method of verification. If your email account is compromised, an attacker can easily reset your password on many other websites. By taking control of my domain name at GoDaddy, my attacker was able to control my email."

Multiplatform Java Malware

Exploits Java on Mac, Windows, or Linux to install DDOS Java malware.

Microsoft: Let customers decide country where cloud data is stored

NSA snooping prompts a change in Microsoft's cloud storage policy as a way to avoid local laws that might compromise data privacy

Google's $2.7m Pwnium hackathon

This March, hackers can win some serious cash and have a go at hacking both ARM and Intel Chromebooks.

Engineer nets Facebook's biggest bug bounty

Reginaldo Silva was awarded $33,500, but had quietly hoped for more.

 

Critical iTunes Update

Apple has released an update to iTunes, all users should upgrade.

Healthcare.gov insecure

Insecure healthcare.gov allowed hacker to access 70,000 records in 4 minutes

AV programs for Windows 8 compared

Independent test lab AV-Test has completed a series of tests for anti-virus/anti-malware products on Windows 8 and 8.1.

ULLtraDIMM, Flash-Based Ultra-Low Latency Storage Device

This creates new opportunities for server system designs to support use cases that require extremely fast storage, such as High-Frequency Trading (HFT), VDI, transaction processing, virtualization and cloud computing.

IT contractor steals 20 million credit card numbers

"The Korean Financial Service Commission (FSC) announced that a contractor working for Korea Credit Bureau, a credit rating service, managed to make copies of customer information including data, credit card details and social security numbers."

Adware vendors buy Chrome Extensions to send ad- and malware-filled updates

" ownership of a Chrome extension can be transferred to another party, and users are never informed when an ownership change happens. Malware and adware vendors have caught wind of this and have started showing up at the doors of extension authors, looking to buy their extensions"

Refrigerators performing cyber attacks

Researchers at Proofpoint have discovered the 'global cyberattack' launched from more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets such as home-networking routers, televisions and refrigerators.

Phishing Warning: Subject Faculty and staff notification

UTC is currently receiving emails with the subject "Faculty and staff notification" trying to trick users into entering their usernames and passwords into a malicious site.  Please just delete them.  If you have entered your password, change it immediately by visiting http://iam.utc.edu.

NSA collected 200 million texts a day

text messages from mobile phone users around the world, and allows the British secret services to access the information

Google to make smart contact lenses

 

Google's smart contacts could potentially make blood sugar monitoring far less invasive.

Target credit card data was sent to a server in Russia

"Over two weeks, the malware collected 11GB of data from Target's POS terminals"

Starbucks App stores passwords in clear text

Anyone with physical access to your phone (and a PC) or malware that has access to the drive can read your Starbuck password.

Adobe Flash Player Update

Adobe has released a patch for Flash Player, all users are urged to update.

Google Chrome 32

Sound indicators on Tabs, better malware protection, and various fixes.  Google Chrome "auto updates."

Net Neutrality Threatened

"The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality rules were partially struck down today by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which said the Commission did not properly justify its anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules."

Supreme Court won't rule on "shopping cart patents"

Against Newegg, Soverain won in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas but lost at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled that the three online shopping patents were invalid because they were obvious.

AMD's new Kaveri APUs

"The new chips will be called the A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), which combine both graphics and central processing unit functions on the same chip. It is also the first series of chips to use a new approach to computing dubbed the Heterogeneous System Architecture, which makes it easier to get around bottlenecks inside a PC and speed the whole system up.

More on Target Hack

“While Steinfhafel said the full extent of what transpired is not yet known, what Target does know is that malware was installed on the company' point of sale registers,”

Dropbox almost fully restored

Dropbox says it was routine maintenance not hackers that caused continuing problems.

Threshold aka Windows 9

"This is the release my sources previously pegged as being the one that will see the return of the Start menu and the ability to run Metro-style apps on the desktop alongside desktop applications. "   Out April 2015.

Microsoft Twitter and Technet Blog "hacked"

It was probably through stolen credentials or weak passwords.   Don't give your password away, use a different password for each account, and use strong passwords.

January Microsoft Patches

Microsoft is releasing patches next Tuesday, none of which are rated critical.  There is one for XP/2003 that should probably be rated as critical.  Users of XP/2003 should consider migrating to newer software.

January Java Patches

Next Tuesday brings a plethora of patches for Oracle products, including 85+ that are remotely executable.

Preventing unwanted email via the new feature in Google+

Now, by default, anyone who can see your Google+ page can send you email.  Geek.com has a quick tutorial on how to disable this.

Target breach affects up to 70 million people.

Krebs reports that up to 70 million people's personal data may have been lost including email and phone numbers.  No details on how it happened.

Windows and Android on one PC

Android hosted on Windows, but why?

World's fastest organic transistor developed

Engineers created the thin-film organic transistors that could operate more than five times faster than previous examples of this experimental technology.

Snapchat Complies with Government Requests

It should be no surprise that Snapchat will cooperate with Law Enforcement.

Lack of OS X Patches

It appears that Apple has stopped releasing patches for OS X earlier than Mavericks.  They still patch Safari and iTunes, but the "regular updates" for earlier OSes have stopped.  Apple is urging all customers to upgrade to Mavericks, but there have been complaints about bugs in the new OS.

Naked Security

LinkedIn brings down lawsuit on fake account scammers

They're suing those who abused the site, scraping for data. ITProPortal

PC the size of a SDCARD

Quark, a 32-bit low-power x86 processor, sits inside Intel’s Arduino-compatible Raspberry Pi-alike Galileo board computer.

Register

No more Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows XP

You should upgrade to a new version of Windows if possible.  If not, there are many antivirus products that still run on XP.  InfoWorld

Yahoo Mail switches on mandatory HTTPS

All other email providers have been enforcing secure connections for years.  Softpedia

Jelly, take a picture and ask a question

"Smartly, it isn't just your circle of friends that see your Jelly posts. It goes out to friends of friends too. Not only does that mean you'll have a higher chance of seeing an answer, but you can answer more questions yourself." ITPro

New App FacialNetwork scans faces, produces report

Aim your smartphone camera, take a picture, and it searches "the net" to find information about your subject.  Cluley

Ars takes a look at CES 2014

"Monday at CES was filled with plenty of excitement—at least 21 stories worth in fact. "

 

Ars

Move Over CryptoLocker, Meet PowerLocker

"What's more, PowerLocker might also offer several advanced features, including the ability to disable the task manager, registry editor, and other administration functions built into the Windows operating system. "  ars

AT&T turns data caps into profits with new fees for content providers

" to monetize wireless data caps by charging content providers for the right to serve up video and other media without chewing up consumers' monthly data limits"  ARS

Top 5 Most Dangerous Email Subject Lines

Top 5 phishing subject lines. Mcafee

Malware from Yahoo ads did not affect US and Mac and mobile users

Make sure to update your Java regularly. TechWorld

Do you rely on Evernote?

You might want to read this blog.  If you do, make sure to export and archive your notes on local storage occasionally.

BlueStar, the First Prescription-Only App

helps people with Type 2 diabetes (the most common kind) by suggesting, in real time, when to test their blood sugar and how to control it  ieee

OpenSSL defacement due to passwords, not hypervisor hack

Our investigation found that the attack was made through insecure passwords at the hosting provider, leading to control of the hypervisor management console, which then was used to manipulate our virtual server.  OpenSSL

V9 Video Codec Gives 4K Video Streaming A Fighting Chance

These new hardware partners include ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.  TechCrunch

CryptoLocker from a Trojan into a worm

Now can spread via USB.  Cluley

Unencrypted Windows crash reports a ‘significant advantage’ for hackers

"Sniffing crash reports using low-volume “man-in-the-middle” methods — the classic is a rogue Wi-Fi hotspot in a public place — wouldn’t deliver enough information to be valuable, said Watson, but a wiretap at the ISP level, the kind the NSA is alleged to have in place around the world, would."  TechCentral

Sharks on Twitter

When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed.  NPR

Skype’s Social Media Accounts Hacked

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has compromised Skype’s blog.  SANS

Google axes file-sharing apps Bump and Flock

Probably due to security concerns.  Drum

Winamp And Shoutcast sold to Radionomy

Radionomy has some 6,000 stations in its catalog already, with an emphasis on a do-it-yourself platform that anyone can use to create a channel.  TC

Google, Apple Nab 345 Patents That May Govern Your Next Car

More companies looking to the automated car and interfaces to mobile devices. Forbes

HardCore MacPro Review

AnandTech always does a thorough job.

BitStrips - Google's new comics based on your social networking info

"Aside from humor, such comic strips are also usable for education, for instance in summarizing a real-time conversation between two political leaders as it is happening"  Slashdot

4.6M Snapchat Usernames, Phone Numbers Leaked Online

SnapchatDB.info went live last night and allowed visitors to download the database of Snapchat user info, though the last two digits of the phone numbers were censored  pcmag