Countries prepping for Cyberwar:

Threats of cyber-warfare have been hyped for decades. There have been unauthorized penetrations into government systems since the early ARPANET days and it has long been known that the U.S. critical infrastructure is vulnerable.

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Google poised to become your phone company...

Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process. Google has bought Gizmo 5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company.

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Mixed Response to Astley iPhone Virus

iPhones across Australia lit up with the face of '80s crooner Rick Astley this week as a Wollongong TAFE student made international headlines for releasing the first virus to infect the popular smartphone platform.

The virus is able to reset the phone wallpaper to display an image of Astley (a practice known as rickrolling) on “jailbroken” iPhones.

More Here..

12 Celebrity Death Phishing Attacks

Phishers have been busy following the groundswell of celebrity deaths that have occupied recent news headlines. Although most attacks exploit Michael Jackson's death, hackers show they will take a chance on Patrick Swayze and anything else that will generate traffic.

Here are a few examples

The Beatles - Don't Let Me Down (1969)

That is so last decade, ten years of development...
Say hello to Your UMPC Future...



2010, Starting at... What's your budget... ?

Stupid User Tricks, Vol. 1

End users are IT’s worst nightmare. They have a nearly inexhaustible capacity for misusing and damaging equipment, misunderstanding instructions and applications, and ignorance for how technology works. The Spiceworks community of IT professionals and service providers maintains a rolling list of stupidest questions end users ask.

Here’s a sampling.

Install any Linux distro directly from hard disk without burning any DVD

"The prerequisite of this trick is to have an operating system already installed on your computer. This is obvious because unless you are able to boot into your machine, you can't install anything; and we are not going to boot from the Linux disk because we aren't burning any. Here I'm going to focus on Microsoft Windows as the pre installed operating system.

"Almost all Linux installers uses two files to boot the computer: a Linux kernel, and an initial root file system containing a minimal set of directories that is mounted prior to when the real root file system is available. This initial root file system is also called Ram disk (initrd). We will use these two files to boot our PC. Now lets get to the actual procedure."

More Here..

Earth bears scars of human destruction...

"It's a very thin veil of atmosphere around the Earth that keeps us alive," But there are some effects of the human destruction of the Earth as well."


More Here: http://bit.ly/y1jME


Find thousands of products that utilize alternative and renewable solar energy sources at: http://www.energylords.com

Virtualization for Dummies

Sun has introduced the power of virtualization to hundreds of businesses of all sizes, including Wikipedia, eBay, SmugMug, and several other fast growing social networking sites. Learn how you too can save energy, time, and money, and improve scalability with this guide to virtualization success.

Download your free copy of Virtualization for Dummies.

Never pay for 411 calls again, Using Google 411

Yes, you can take it with you.

PortableApps.com is the world's most popular portable software solution allowing you to take your favorite software with you. A fully open source and free platform, it works on any portable storage device (USB flash drive, iPod, memory card, portable hard drive, etc). With millions of users all over the world and a full collection of open source software as well as compatible freeware and commercial software and partners in the software and hardware industry, PortableApps.com is the most complete solution for life on the go.

Red Hat — Stand Alone Or Get Bought?

"It seems that this economy has inspired a lot of businesses to move to Linux, with Red Hat posting profits that beat everyone's expectations. There's a dark side to being a highly profitable company in a down economy, though — now there are talks of Citigroup and Oracle wanting to buy Red Hat. For a while now, we've been watching Yahoo fend off Carl Icahn and Steve Ballmer so that they could stay independent, but the fight seems to be a huge distraction for Yahoo, with lots of energy (and money) invested. Will Red Hat stay independent? What potential buyer would make for a good parent company?"

Posted by Soulskill on SD

The Conficker Worm: A CBS Video

The Conficker C Worm to hit computers April 1st.

In an event that hits the computer world only once every few years, security experts are racing against time to mitigate the impact of a bit of malware which is set to wreak havoc on a hard-coded date. As is often the case, that date is April 1.

Malware creators love to target April Fool's Day with their wares, and the latest worm, called Conficker C, could be one of the most damaging attacks we've seen in years.

Conficker first bubbled up in late 2008 and began making headlines in January as known infections topped 9 million computers. Now in its third variant, Conficker C, the worm has grown incredibly complicated, powerful, and virulent... though no one is quite sure exactly what it will do when D-Day arrives.

Thanks in part to a quarter-million-dollar bounty on the head of the writer of the worm, offered by Microsoft, security researchers are aggressively digging into the worm's code as they attempt to engineer a cure or find the writer before the deadline. What's known so far is that on April 1, all infected computers will come under the control of a master machine located somewhere across the web, at which point anything's possible. Will the zombie machines become denial of service attack pawns, steal personal information, wipe hard drives, or simply manifest more traditional malware pop-ups and extortion-like come-ons designed to sell you phony security software? No one knows.

Conficker is clever in the way it hides its tracks because it uses an enormous number of URLs to communicate with HQ. The first version of Conficker used just 250 addresses each day -- which security researchers and ICANN simply bought and/or disabled -- but Conficker C will up the ante to 50,000 addresses a day when it goes active, a number which simply can't be tracked and disabled by hand.

At this point, you should be extra vigilant about protecting your PC: Patch Windows completely through Windows Update and update your anti-malware software as well. Make sure your antivirus software is actually running too, as Conficker may have disabled it.

Microsoft also offers a free online safety scan here, which should be able to detect all Conficker versions.

'Tigger' Trojan Keeps Security Researchers Hopping...

It's malware that actually removes other malware from its victims' PCs. And so far, nobody is exactly sure how it's being distributed.

Security experts this week are buzzing about a new Trojan called Tigger.A, also known as Syzor. The data-stealing malware has quietly claimed about 250,000 victims since it was first spotted by security intelligence company iDefense in November, according to a Washington Post report.

Tigger.A allows attackers to gain access to "administrator" privileges on Windows machines, even if the user himself doesn't have those privileges, according to the report. It takes advantage of a vulnerability (MS08-066) in Windows' "privilege escalation" feature that Microsoft revealed -- and patched -- in October.

"Tigger removes a long list of other..... More Here

It's a Facebook Security World After All....

Koobface Variant Hits Facebook -- Again
In this scam, detected by researchers at Trend Micro, users receive a message with a link, purporting to be from a friend from the user's contact list, along with a spoofed version of YouTube. Once users click the link, they are taken to a site supposedly hosting a video that appears to be from the alleged sender, containing the name as well as the photo of the user's "friend" from his or her Facebook profile. Here

Facebook Corporate Security
The range of security threats around social networking sites, including LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and others, ranges greatly, Amit said. Here

Facebook Turns Site into a Democracy:
In addition to "poking" former classmates and updating your status update with what you had for lunch today, Facebook will now allow you to vote on the site's terms of service. Here

Microsoft Sues TomTom For Linux Patent Infringement.

Microsoft has gone and done it, they've filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming Linux violates their patents.

The case centers on portable GPS device maker Tomtom, which uses Linux in its device. Despite Microsoft claiming for years that parts of Linux infringe on its intellectual property, the case is believed to be the first time Microsoft has tried to prove a case against Linux in court.

Here

President Obama's homeowners aid package.

Feds Bust Nationwide H-1B Visa Scam

Silicon Valley has repeatedly urged Congress to raise the H-1B cap, which is currently set at 65,000 visas per fiscal year, but lawmakers have resisted, citing concerns over fraud in the H-1B program.

In October 2008, a USCIS report found that the H-1B program has more than a 20 percent violation rate. The fraud identified in the report included jobs not located where employers claimed, H-1B visa holders not being paid the prevailing wage, forged documents, fraudulent degrees and "shell businesses."

Even before the report was issued, Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Bernie Sanders of Vermont were seeking reform of the H-1B visa program. A bill introduced in the 110th Congress by Grassley and Durbin would require employers to make a good-faith effort to hire American workers first. Employers would also have to show that the H-1B worker would not displace an American worker.

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