Bitmap0023 - Slashdot User

Torpig botnet hijacked and dissected 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2009, @09:33PM

An anonymous reader writes "A team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara have hijacked the infamous Torpig botnet for 10 days. They have released a report that describes how that was done and the data they collected. They observed more than 180K infected machines (this is the number of actual bots, not just IP addresses), collected 70GB of data stolen by the Torpig trojan, extracted almost 10K bank accounts and credit card numbers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the underground market, and examined the privacy threats that this trojan poses to its victims. Considering that Torpig has been around at least since 2006, isn't it time to finally get rid of it?"

Comment: Re:Dear Bruce... (Score 1) 607

by Bitmap0023 on Friday May 01 2009, @12:18PM (#27788503) Attached to: Let's Rename Swine Flu As "Colbert Flu"

Oooh! being a Thompson myself I whole heartedly endorse the use of this name, while hoping for a spectacular death toll to recast the name in notoriety.

Comment: Re:Please let it be!! (Score 5, Informative) 557

by Bitmap0023 on Wednesday April 29 2009, @11:29PM (#27767943) Attached to: WHO Raises Swine Flu Threat Level

whats strange is the original outbreak of the 1918 spanish flu started at a Kansas army base. As the WW1 soldiers were deployed to Europe the virus went with them.

Designer accused of copying his own work 0

Submitted by the_harlequin on Sunday April 05 2009, @07:01AM

the_harlequin writes "A successful designer, who has a showcase of his own work available online, has had a stock image site accuse him of copy-right infringement of his own work citing damages of $18,000. The story doesn't end there, with the stock photo site hiring lawyers who have been to the original designer's clients and told them that the designer is being investigated for copy-right infringement and thier logo might be copied thus damaging his reputation and lively-hood.

My theory is that someone copied my artwork, separated them from any typography and then posted them for sale on the stock site. Someone working for the site either saw my [LogoPond] showcase or was alerted to the similarities. They then prepared the bill and sent it to me. The good thing is that the bill gives me a record of every single image they took from me. That helps me gather dates, sketches, emails, etc to help me prove my case. The bad thing is that despite my explanations and proof, they will not let this go.

http://www.jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/"

Apple's Wozniak using Twitter, Facebook to survive-> 0

Submitted by Bitmap0023 on Tuesday March 10 2009, @05:24PM

Bitmap0023 writes "'Vote for Woz' sites, Facebook, Twitter could give Apple co-founder the boost he needs March 10, 2009 (Computerworld) Technology has long paid off for Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak and he's expecting nothing less now that he's on Dancing with the Stars. Wozniak made his dancing debut Monday night on the eighth season of the reality show, garnering harsh criticism and only 13 out of 30 potential points from the panel of judges. With the lowest score of any of the 13 stars who danced last night, Wozniak is depending on his online fans to vote him through to the next round. With sites like VoteWoz.com and Woz.org supporting the Silicon Valley icon, he's hoping that he'll get enough viewer votes to push him past other Dancing contestants like Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson, rapper Lil' Kim and Bond girl Denise Richards. The Vote for Woz page on Facebook has more than 1,500 members and VoteWoz on Twitter has more than 1,000 followers. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=knowledge_center&articleId=9129326&taxonomyId=1&intsrc=kc_top"
Link to Original Source

Norwegian Websites Declare War On IE 6 349

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 20 2009, @05:32PM
from the we-just-quit-testing-on-ie6 dept.

Eyvind A. Larre writes "A large and rapidly growing campaign to get users to stop using IE6 is being implemented throughout Europe. 'Leading the charge is Finn.no, an eBay-like site that is apparently the largest site for buying and selling goods in all of Norway (Finn is Norwegian for "Find"). Earlier this week, Finn.no posted a warning on its web page for visitors running IE 6. The banner, seen at right, urges them to ditch IE 6 and upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.' The campaign is now spreading like fire on Twitter (#IE6), and starting to become an amazing effort by big media companies to get rid of IE6! The campaign also hit Wired some hours ago."

Microsoft Secret Prototype Phone Stolen 249

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 20 2009, @03:11PM
from the microsoft-to-develop-more-secure-pockets dept.

bossanovalithium writes to tell us that details are emerging about the theft of a top secret prototype mobile device stolen from an executive's pocket. Time to start watching eBay. "There are fears that leaks regarding the features and early bugs in the software could mar the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 which the company hopes will give it the edge over the iPhone and the new Google Android operating system. The new product includes support for touch-screen technology similar to that found on the Apple iPhone. Among the features offered in the new service unveiled by Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, on Tuesday, is a version of Windows Marketplace for Mobiles, which is set to compete with the popular Apple's App Store and provide easy ways to download music and products to mobiles. "

Adobe Flaw Heightens Risk of Malicious PDFs 193

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 20 2009, @12:00PM
from the driving-by dept.

snydeq writes "Security companies warn of a new flaw in version 9 of Adobe Reader and Acrobat that could compromise PCs merely by the opening of a malicious PDF. Although attacks are not yet widespread, hackers are exploiting the flaw in the wild, gaining control of computers via buffer overflow conditions triggered by the opening of specially crafted PDFs." Adobe is calling the flaw "critical" and says a patch for Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 will be released by March 11.

Adobe Flaw Heightens Risk Of Malicious PDFs-> 1

Submitted by

snydeq

on Friday February 20 2009, @10:40AM

snydeq writes "Security companies warn of a new flaw in version 9 of Adobe Reader and Acrobat that could compromise PCs merely by opening a malicious PDF. Although attacks are not yet widespread, hackers are exploiting the flaw in the wild, gaining control of computers via buffer overflow conditions triggered by the opening of specially crafted PDFs."
Link to Original Source

Do Video Games Cost Too Much? 763

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 20 2009, @07:02AM
from the depends-how-the-pirate-bay-trial-goes-right dept.

Valve's Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year's Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which "resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title's original launch performance." They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount. This will undoubtedly add to the speculation that game prices have risen too high for the current economic climate. G4TV ran a live blog of Newell's presentation, providing a few more details.