Aviran's Place

New Internet Explorer code-execution attacks

Aviran Mordo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:18:34 +0000

Hackers are exploiting a security bug in earlier versions of Internet Explorer that allows them to remotely execute malicious code, Microsoft warned on Tuesday. The vulnerability in IE versions 6 and 7 allows remote attackers to gain the same access to the affected PC as the local user. The bug, which stems from an invalid pointer [...]

Adobe Reader is world’s most-exploited app

Aviran Mordo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:17:02 +0000

Adobe’s ubiquitous Reader application has replaced Microsoft Word as the program that’s most often targeted in malware campaigns, according to figures compiled by F-Secure. Files based on Reader were exploited in almost 49 per cent of the targeted attacks of 2009, compared with about 39 per cent that took aim at Microsoft Word. By comparison, in [...]

Google goes cycling

Aviran Mordo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:15:18 +0000

Google is offering a cycling option for users of its map service. If you ask Google for directions in some US cities from today you can choose “bicycling” as an option, alongside “by car”, “walking” or “by public transport”. The company said it had been the most requested feature since the map site launched.

Cisco leapfrogs rivals with faster router

Aviran Mordo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:12:19 +0000

Cisco Systems Inc introduced its first major new routers in six years and said they can be configured to handle Internet traffic up to 12 times faster than rival products. Cisco, the world’s largest network equipment maker, said up to 72 of the new CRS-3 routers can be connected for capacity of 322 terabits per second [...]

UTF-8 Encoding In POST And GET Request On Tomcat

Aviran Mordo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:33:36 +0000

I recently had to write a project using Tomcat that takes data from html forms and save the data to a database. I thought hey this is pretty strait forward, however while I was expecting the form data to arrive to Tomcat as a UTF-8 string I surprisingly got the request encoding is ISO-8859-1. While [...]

Google, Dish testing new TV search service

Aviran Mordo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:16:26 +0000

Google Inc and No. 2 U.S. satellite TV operator Dish Network Corp are jointly testing a television programing search service, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The paper said the service runs on TV set-top boxes which use elements of Google’s Android wireless operating system. It allows users to [...]

Microsoft Demos Game Across Phone, Xbox 360 & Win 7

Aviran Mordo — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:51:43 +0000

During the keynote presentation at TechEd Middle East in Dubai, Microsoft’s Eric Rudder played the same Indiana Jones-ish game on a Windows computer, a Windows Phone 7 phone, and an Xbox 360. Gaming is about to get real ubiquitous. Not only is the game itself playable on all three platforms, but the session is maintained when [...]

Firefox alpha dons Flash flak jacket

Aviran Mordo — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:38:01 +0000

Mozilla has pushed out a Firefox developer preview that runs Adobe Flash and other plug-ins as a separate process, hoping to prevent crashing plug-ins from crashing the browser proper. Mozilla’s new developer preview is the second “pre-release” version of the open source outfit’s Gecko 1.9.3 rendering engine. Today’s official Firefox offering - version 3.6 - uses [...]

Google Intros Web Clipboard For Docs

Aviran Mordo — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:56:50 +0000

This week Google quietly rolled out a new feature within Google Docs. It is offering a Web-based clipboard that will let users copy-and-paste content between Google Docs. It also manages to keep Web formatting intact. Google writes in a blog post, “This new clipboard temporarily stores items you’ve copied in the cloud, then allows you to [...]

Real settles lawsuits, will stop selling RealDVD

Aviran Mordo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:17:18 +0000

RealNetworks has agreed to pay US$4.5 million and permanently stop selling its RealDVD software as part of a legal settlement with six Hollywood movie studios, the company said Wednesday. The lawsuits date back to 2008, when the movie studios accused RealNetworks of selling software that allowed people to essentially steal DVDs by making copies of them. [...]

Google takes aim at Microsoft with acquisition | Reuters

Aviran Mordo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:56:00 +0000

Google Inc stepped up its assault on Microsoft Corp’s productivity software business with the acquisition of a small start-up company that allows Microsoft users to edit and share their documents on the Web. Google said on its company blog on Friday that it has acquired San Francisco-based DocVerse. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. “With DocVerse, [...]

Panasonic, Best Buy to tie up on 3D TV sales

Aviran Mordo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:55:09 +0000

Panasonic Corp will tie up with the top U.S. electronics chain Best Buy Co to market and boost the sales of its 3D TVs in the United States, the Nikkei business daily reported on Sunday. The report comes ahead of the world’s fourth-largest flat TV maker’s launch of its 3D TV in the United States this [...]

Microsoft: Don’t press F1 key in Windows XP

Aviran Mordo — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:46:32 +0000

Microsoft told Windows XP users not to press the F1 key when prompted by a Web site, as part of its reaction to an unpatched vulnerability that hackers could exploit to hijack PCs running Internet Explorer (IE). In a security advisory issued late Monday, Microsoft confirmed the unpatched bug in VBScript that Polish researcher Maurycy [...]

Skype gets into Nokia smartphones

Aviran Mordo — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:43:31 +0000

Internet telephony firm Skype took a second major leap into the wireless market in just a few weeks, unveiling software from top phone maker Nokia Oyj which could run on more than 200 million smartphones around the world. The new Skype for Symbian software is available for free download from Nokia’s Ovi Store to consumers globally.

Google Launches User-Generated Street View

Aviran Mordo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:02:55 +0000

Although it continues to face criticism from European privacy authorities about Street View, that hasn’t stopped Google from adding features to the service. The latest to launch is a kind of user-generated layer to Street View that uses photos uploaded by individuals to create a pseudo-3D panorama of a specific spot. Although there aren’t going [...]