eggyknap - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google Pulls 21 Android Apps with Trojan Rootkits (switched.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @08:05AM

suraj.sun writes: Thanks to a tip-off by a redditor, and some investigation by Android Police ( http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-android-malware-has-arrived-stolen-apps-released-to-the-market-that-root-your-phone-steal-your-data-and-open-backdoor/ ), Google has pulled 21 Android Market apps that were infected with a backdoor Trojan rootkit. If you downloaded any of the infected apps, they will be automatically deleted from your phone.

The attack vector was ingenious, and plays on the Android Market's biggest weakness: the almost complete absence of app moderation. The nefarious developer crafted 21 apps that share the name of legitimate apps (such as 'Chess'), and into each of them he inserted some Trojan code. The apps then quietly report your sensitive data back to a remote server, while you play with your free app.

Download Squad: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/02/google-pulls-21-android-malware-apps-with-trojan-rootkit-over-50000-infected/

Android Police: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-android-malware-has-arrived-stolen-apps-released-to-the-market-that-root-your-phone-steal-your-data-and-open-backdoor/

Submission + - U.S. Bans Marijuana Substitute 'Fake Pot' Chemical (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @07:16AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said it has temporarily banned five chemicals used to make so-called "fake pot" products, perceived as "legal" alternatives to marijuana. According to the DEA, these substances, known as synthetic cannabinoids, are biologically similar to THC, the active chemical in marijuana."

Submission + - SCO found no source code in 2004 (groklaw.net)

Submitted by doperative on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @06:50AM

doperative writes: A consultant hired by SCO in 2004 to compare UNIX and Linux, with the thought he could be used as an expert at trial, says that, after days and days, his comparison tool found "very little correlation". When he told that to SCO, it paid him and he never heard from SCO again.

Submission + - Scribus 1.3.5 Beginner's Guide (packtpub.com)

Submitted by

eggyknap

on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @01:48AM

eggyknap writes: "To much of the world, a "document" is just some text. These authors limit themselves strictly to black and white, and only rarely employ such extravagances as italic typefaces and varying font sizes. I fall squarely in this category, so reading "Scribus 1.3.5 Beginner's Guide" was an interesting introduction to an otherwise completely unfamiliar world.

Scribus is a desktop publishing application similar to QuarkXpress or Adobe InDesign, but open source and free to download and use, targeted at those who want to create visually interesting documents such as flyers, promotional literature, brochures, and reports. It allows for creative and flexible formatting of text and images, to handle large and demanding publishing projects. Author Cedric Gemy is a long-time user of and contributer to both the Scribus and Inkscape projects (Inkscape is an open source vector graphics application), and his new book provides a fairly straightforward and understandable tutorial for the beginner.

Gemy is French, writing in English, and though the book is generally very easy to understand, the writing often reflects the unconventional word choice of a non-native speaker. Once the reader gets used to the style, however, the instructions and descriptions are simple and useful, flowing logically from subject to subject, as seen in the sample chapter available from PacktPub.com. While unapologetic about Scribus' occasional failings and shortcomings in comparison to its more established commercial competitors, Gemy presents Scribus as a capable and useful tool for publishers from amateur to professional, and does so with useful step-by-step instructions for each of the topics it treats.

I have no background whatsoever in desktop publishing, so I found the book's occasional rules of thumb particularly interesting. For instance, it instructs the designer never to use images of less than 144 points per inch for works destined for hardcopy. Also intriguing were the introductions to bits of publishing practices I'd never imagined, such as its section on "ink coverage", which describes Scribus' technique for reducing the number of colors and amount of ink a print task will require, or its section on creating PDF files for printing (large and detailed) vs. for the web (small and lightweight).

This is not a book about graphic design, and its readers should not expect insights into decisions of layout for maximum effect, color matching, and the like. It is instead a practical and technical manual, describing the functions of menus, the operation of various tools, and the application of Scribus' Python API for user-defined scripting. The book gives advice on choosing the best image file format for importing into a document, but remains silent on the subject of choosing the best color to complement the image in the rest of the document.

Gemy claims this is a guide for beginners, and his content doesn't disappoint. No publishing experience is necessary to navigate the instructions, and the examples were sufficient to enliven even my long dormant creative spark. Although I don't expect I'll be responsible for publishing a magazine or sales brochure anytime soon, it's not unlikely Scribus will help build the invitations for my kid's next birthday party."

Submission + - More Than 100 Whales Strand Themselves in New Zeal (time.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @01:12AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Could there possibly be any connection between the 100 beached pilot whales, recent earthquakes and geomagnetic anomalies?"

Submission + - Forensic Analysis Of Geohot's Computer In Dispute! (psx-scene.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Monday February 28, 2011 @09:46PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "In the latest round of Sony vs. Geohot legal wrangling, court documents reveal that there is now a dispute as to how Geohot's hard drives are being handled by the third-party company designated to analyze them.

The original court order only called for the drive(s) to be delivered to a third party "for the purpose of isolating, segregating and/or removing the information on those devices related to Defendant Hotz's circumvention of the TPMs in the PS3 system."

Now the company doing the analysis wants to create TWO FULL IMAGES of the drive(s), in both decrypted and encrypted form!!! According to Geohot's attorneys, "SCEA is not entitled to inspect the impounded drives under the impoundment order, nor is it allowed to create and preserve additional copies of the impounded drives, but this is precisely what it seeks to do.""

Submission + - Intel’s new SSD is the 6Gbps 510 series

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 28, 2011 @09:45PM

An anonymous reader writes: We knew that Intel was going to have to release some new SSDs sooner or later and it turns out that today was the today. The company unveiled the SSD 510 series which will use a speedy 6Gbps interface in order to allow for maximum throughput to today’s newest motherboards, like those packing Intel’s own Cougar Point chipsets. In their release Intel noted that the 510 series is capable of reading data at over 500MBps and writing it at over 315MBps, making for greatly increased speeds compared to their older products. The other bit of big news for these 120GB and 250GB SSDs is that they use a Marvell controller instead of Intel's homegrown one.

Submission + - Microsoft Agrees ActiveX Content Should Be Blocked (msdn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 28, 2011 @09:20PM

An anonymous reader writes: A post on the IE blog details the new ActiveX filtering feature in the IE9 release candidate. Microsoft's Herman Ng writes, 'ActiveX Filtering in the IE9 Release Candidate gives you greater control over how Web pages run on your PC. With ActiveX Filtering, you can turn off ActiveX controls for all Web sites and then turn them back on selectively as you see fit. While ActiveX controls like Adobe Flash are important for Web experiences today for videos and more, some consumers may want to limit how they run for security, performance, or other reasons.' My favourite quote from the article is one of the image captions: 'ActiveX content may prevent you from having a good experience viewing a Web site'

Submission + - Will Apple kill its third-party store network? (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by

daria42

on Monday February 28, 2011 @09:17PM

daria42 writes: "Industry observers have long eyed Apple's expansion of its own retail stores as an important move which could see it eventually decide to cease third-party distribution of its products alone and become the sole avenue through which consumers can buy its products. But how far away is that move? Very close, according to Australian consumer electronics entrepreneur Ruslan Kogan, who has built his own business purely on the internet retail model. It seems likely the company will make the move on a country by country basis as it rolls out its own stores."

Submission + - Prospero: Robot Swarm Farmer (robots.net)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Monday February 28, 2011 @08:59PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "A forum post on TrossenRobotics.com shows what's called a an Autonomous Micro Planter (AMP), a small, six-legged robot named Prospero, that's capable of drilling seed holes and depositing seeds in them. The forum post includes two YouTube videos and several photos. The author of the post, David Dorhout, describes this category of machine as the first of four steps, saying The other three steps involve autonomous robots that tend the crops, harvest them, and finally one robot that can plant, tend, and harvest--autonomously transitioning from one phase to another. Prospero was designed for a contest sponsored by SchmartBoard and placed first in the Parallax MCU segment (there were also TI and MicroChip MCU segments). The forum post links to a PDF which explains the project in detail, including source code."

Submission + - Asus' Kinect-like system for PCs coming in May (idg.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Monday February 28, 2011 @08:22PM

angry tapir writes: "Asus will soon offer a motion sensing device that looks and works like the Xbox Kinect. The Wavi Xtion system has two parts: a media streaming device and the sensor. The streaming device extends the PC's desktop to a television alongside which the sensor is located and maintains a channel back to the PC for data from the sensor."

Submission + - Judge tires of mass P2P filing (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Locke2005 on Monday February 28, 2011 @08:21PM

Locke2005 writes: Judge Milton Shadur threw out Copyright Lawyer John Steele's 300 count copyright infringement case filed in Illinois based on the simple observation that the lawyer should have known from the IP addresses that the majority of IP addresses accused of infringing were not in fact in Illinois...

Submission + - Infected Androids Run Up Big Texting Bills

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Monday February 28, 2011 @08:20PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Computerworld reports that a rogue Android app is hijacking smartphones and running up big texting bills to premium rate numbers before the owner knows it. Chinese hackers grabbed a copy of Steamy Windows, a free program, added a backdoor Trojan horse to the app's code, then placed the reworked app on unsanctioned third-party "app stores" where unsuspecting or careless Android smartphones find it, download it and install it. "This one stands out," says Vikram Thakur, a principle security response manager at Symantec. "It's pretty comprehensive in what it's doing." The app also has a built-in filter that blocks incoming texts from the user's carrier, a trick it uses to keep victims in the dark about the invisible texting. "It monitors inbound SMS texts, and blocks alerts telling you that you've already exceeded your quota," says Thakur adding that smartphone owners won't be aware of the charges they've racked up texting premium services until they receive their next statement. "If you're hell-bent on using [unauthorized app stores], look at the permissions the app requests when it installs. A [rogue] app will request more permissions than the legitimate version.""

Submission + - Intel completes McAfee acquisition (idg.com.au) 2

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Monday February 28, 2011 @07:45PM

angry tapir writes: "Intel has completed its US$7.68 billion acquisition of security vendor McAfee, the chip maker has announced. The all-cash deal makes Intel a security industry powerhouse, giving it a broad range of consumer and enterprise security products. Intel had been working to get the deal approved by U.S. and European Union regulators since it was announced last August. The European Commission, in particular, had expressed concerns that Intel would give McAfee special treatment when it came to its processors and chipsets, locking other security vendors out of the technology."

Submission + - PlayStation 3 Banned In Europe Temporarily (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by

tekgoblin

on Monday February 28, 2011 @07:30PM

tekgoblin writes: "Looks like Sony is in some trouble at least in Europe. LG had recently sued Sony with a Patent dispute over their blu-ray technology and have been granted a preliminary injunction in the matter. This injunction prevents the PlayStation 3 from currently being imported to Europe. For at least the next 10 days, every PlayStation that is imported will be seized by Government officials."

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