Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - WinZip distributes infected 18.5 update

Submitted by VMB74
VMB74 writes: Paying WinZip customers received an e-mail notification of the Free Upgrade to WinZip 18.5 availability yesterday. The e-mail included a link to the following site:
http://www.winzip.com/en/landi...

Clicking the Get Update button downloads a 802K winzip180xp.exe executable which installs nothing more than a Rocket PUP. Please do not try to run the downloaded winzip180xp.exe on a useful Windows machine you care about. Cleanup is very time consuming.

Here are the VirusTotal scan results:
https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

And the most amazing part is the response of the WinZip technical support which I provided with all technical details. Here it comes in full, in the original formatting, and with the original spelling:

"Hi, I am writing in response to your message:

Thank you for your inquiry.

This is the false positive warning message from Windows or Antivirus application when you are downloading any executable(.exe) files. The WinZip application setup file and other downloads from WinZip download page are safe and does not contains any Virus, malware etc.

Please temporarily disable the your Antivirus application and complete the download of WinZip application Setup file. After completing the download, Please enable your Antivirus application.

Thanks,
Mukesh, WinZip Customer Support"

Submission + - Microsoft Suspending "Patch Tuesday" emails?

Submitted by outofluck70
outofluck70 writes: Got an email today from Microsoft, text is below. They are no longer going to send out emails regarding patches, you have to use RSS or keep visiting their security sites. They blame "governmental policies" as the reason. What could the real reason be? Anybody in the know?

From the email:

********************************************************************
Title: Microsoft Security Notifications
Issued: June 27, 2014
********************************************************************

Notice to IT professionals:

As of July 1, 2014, due to changing governmental policies concerning the issuance of automated electronic messaging, Microsoft is suspending the use of email notifications that announce the
following:

* Security bulletin advance notifications
* Security bulletin summaries
* New security advisories and bulletins
* Major and minor revisions to security advisories and bulletins

In lieu of email notifications, you can subscribe to one or more of the RSS feeds described on the Security TechCenter website.

For more information, or to sign up for an RSS feed, visit the Microsoft Technical Security Notifications webpage at http://technet.microsoft.com/s....

Submission + - Boing Using Accounting Tricks to Throttle SpaceX

Submitted by Required Snark
Required Snark writes: Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put forth a proposal that all US launch providers must "be required to submit financial reports before transporting astronauts to the ISS." This would keep all the launch providers except Boeing /United Lauch Alliance from making manned ISI flights.

The reasoning:

At a hearing on May 1, Shelby said that “NASA is spending billions to help private companies develop a launch vehicle, but has little to no access to the books and records associated with its investment.”

The White House responded stating

their concern “about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition.” The House said that changes made would “likely increasing the program’s cost and potentially delaying its schedule.”

As previously posted on Slashdot, loosing access to these motors could impact up to 31 scheduled missions.

So why is Senator Shelby siding with Boeing and the Russians?

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby today discussed important issues facing Alabama and the nation, including job growth, during his visit to the United Launch Alliance (ULA) production facility in Decatur, Ala., where ULA manufactures both Atlas and Delta launch vehicles.

...

“In light of sustained high unemployment rates, I am pleased that ULA employs hundreds of Alabamians and plans to hire dozens more producing the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle here in Decatur,” said Sen. Shelby. “These high-skilled workers assemble a unique national asset whose success currently underpins the very existence of our national security space program. ULA’s presence is welcome in Alabama. I appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation with the company’s workers and the citizens of Decatur to discuss our country’s deepest challenges and lay out a positive vision for the future.”

So Red White and Blue Senator Shelby has decided that jobs in his state and campaign contributions (a.k.a bribes) from Boeing are more important then access to space. He also seems to have forgotten the American values of free enterprise and technical innovation in favor of state sponsored entrenched interests in both the US (Boeing) and Russia (NPO Energomash).

I wonder what Shelby is doing on the Fourth of July?

Submission + - How to approve the use of open source on the job

Submitted by Czech37
Czech37 writes: If you work in an organization that isn’t focused on development, where computer systems are used to support other core business functions, getting management buy-in for the use of open source can be tricky. Here's how an academic librarian negotiated with his management to get them to give open source software a try, and the four words he recommends you avoid using.

Submission + - MySQL too lazy to fix their shared libraries API (mysql.com)

Submitted by famzah
famzah writes: Since version 5.5 MySQL started to ship the client/server binaries statically linked against the "libmysqlclient.a" library. This uses more disk space and also takes away the option to fix the shared code in the library once, rather than by recompiling every single binary which uses it.

The summary by Axel Schwenke from MariaDB is right on the target:
  1. In the past we exported every symbol from libmysqlclient.so (this was certainly bad)
  2. We changed this to export only API functions (good)
  3. Our own (MySQL) clients use non-API functions and thus don't work with the new dynamic lib. There is a word for this: it's a bug.
  4. We are too lazy to fix the clients (or extend the API). So we take the short path and link the clients with the static lib. I also have a word for this: disgusting.

Submission + - He Pressed The Brakes, His Tesla Model S Didn't Stop. Why?

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: When things go wrong with the Tesla Model S electric car, its very loyal--and opinionated--owners usually speak up. And that's just what David Noland has done. An incident in which his Model S didn't stop when he pressed the brake pedal scared him--and got him investigating. He measured pedal spacing on 22 different new cars at dealers--and his analysis suggests that the Tesla pedal setup may be causing what aviation analysts call a "design-induced pilot error". And pedal design, as Toyota just learned to the tune of $1.2 billion, is very important indeed in preventing accidents.

Comment Re:That's not "why it doesn't work"....that's you (Score 1) 66

by santajon (#46422199) Attached to: Getty Images Makes 35 Million Images Free For Non-Commercial Use

Thanks for sticking words in my mouth.

To start, you can't buy images from Getty. You may only buy licenses to use an image.

Second, The purpose of the program is to offer images at no cost to non-commercial users. I evaluated for those purposes. For such a program to be successful the images must be useable. I'm suggesting that even non-commercial users will find it difficult to use.

Submission + - NASA: Hubble telescope catches asteroid death (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA said today that the Hubble Space Telescope snapped what the agency called a never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid in mid-space. The asteroid, designated P/2013 R3 has broken into as many as ten smaller pieces , each with a comet -like tail, that NASA says are drifting away from each other at a leisurely 1.5 kilometers per hour — slower than the speed of a strolling human.

Submission + - NSA Chief Pushes Legislation To Stifle The First Amendment (zerohedge.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Recently, what came out with the justices in the United Kingdom they looked at what happened on Miranda and other things, and they said it's interesting: journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues. They don't know how to weigh the fact of what they're giving out and saying, is it in the nation's interest to divulge this.
— General Keith Alexander, Director of the NSA

Although General Alexander states the above with regard to the UK justice system, he clearly agrees with the assessment. Read the passage above again and think about how scary that statement is. It becomes clear that one of the reasons abuses at the NSA are so egregious is because of the attitude of the person in charge. Alexander genuinely thinks that intelligence officials know best, and should not be subject to any sort of accountability. You don't need to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU to see how dangerous this perspective is. To endorse this notion that "journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues," is to effectively make illegal one of the most important free speech rights in any democracy. This sort of attitude represents the antithesis of American values.

Not only does General Alexander see things this way, apparently he is lobbying for Congressional legislation that would solidify this authoritarian view within the law itself. For example, the Guardian reported yesterday that:

General Keith Alexander, who has furiously denounced the Snowden revelations, said at a Tuesday cybersecurity panel that unspecified "headway" on what he termed "media leaks" was forthcoming in the next several weeks, possibly to include "media leaks legislation." The general, who is due to retire in the next several weeks, said that the furore over Snowden's surveillance revelations — which he referred to only as "media leaks" - was complicating his ability to get congressional support for a bill that would permit the NSA and the military Cyber Command he also helms to secretly communicate with private entities like banks about online data intrusions and attacks.

Slashdot Top Deals

The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.

Close