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Microsoft buys Netscape in $1 Million deal

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:31:31 -0400

Here's a deal that would have made many minds explode back in the 1990s: Microsoft is buying Netscape. Or at least, most of the important parts of the company that used to be synonymous with "Internet".

That's a side component of the $1 billion patent sale that AOL and Microsoft announced this morning. As part of the transaction, AOL announced that it was selling off "stock of an AOL subsidiary" at a loss, in a move that's supposed to reduce its overall tax bill.

AOL didn't disclose the name of that subsidiary in its press release, but a person familiar with the transaction has clued me in: It's Netscape.

Microsoft will buy the underlying patents for the old browser, but AOL will hang onto the brand, and the related Netscape businesses, which make up a grab-bag of stuff these days: An ISP, a URL, a brand name, etc.

All of which probably makes sense on someone's ledger books. But the transaction may still make a few heads spin, at least for people who remember Internet history and/or have access to Wikipedia.

Source: AllThingsD

HijackThis is now open-source software

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:01:07 -0500

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cloud security leader, today announced the release of HijackThis as an open source application.

HijackThis - (see this Wikipedia article) - scans your computer to find settings changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. HijackThis also generates an in-depth report to enable expert users to analyze and fix an infected computer. Several security communities use HijackThis log files to help users evaluate and eradicate infections. A common practice for novice users is to generate a HijackThis log file and submit it to one of the many forums devoted to HijackThis on the web. Experts at these forums provide information on which items are causing your problems and how to remove them safely from your computer.

The code, originally written in Visual Basic, is now officially available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/.

"This means that other people can build on a solid base to create or improve their own anti-malware tools," said Merijn Bellekom, the original creator of HijackThis.

A look back at Microsoft's 2011 security landscape

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:32:32 -0500

Decrease in Critical Issues and Bulletins

As far as individual issues, Critical-class CVEs accounted for less than a third of the issues we addressed in bulletin releases for the first time since we began our monthly bulletin-release cadence in 2004. And in absolute numbers, Critical-class CVEs are at their lowest levels since 2005. The fact that we're seeing lower percentages of Critical issues and bulletins year-over-year demonstrates progress made by the product groups in creating more secure software.

With this regularly scheduled monthly release, our bulletin count for 2011 is 99, with 13 released today. Of those, we determined 10 to be Important-class bulletins, with only three classified as Critical in severity. In 2011, Critical-class bulletins represented just 32 percent of all bulletins – the lowest percentage since we began our monthly bulletin-release cadence in 2004 and, again, the lowest absolute number since 2005. Interestingly, for the second half of the year the numbers are even lower, with under 20 percent of bulletins released in the last six months rated Critical in severity.

Amazon.com Invests in Foxit

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (gUiTaR_mIkE) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:54:57 -0500

FREMONT, CA - DECEMBER 6, 2011 - Foxit Corporation, a leading provider of solutions for reading, editing, creating, organizing, and securing PDF documents, today announced Amazon.com, Inc. has made an investment in the company, and will be working with Amazon to support PDF reading in Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

"Kindle has long supported PDF as a document format that is independent of application software, hardware, or operating systems." said Jeff Blackburn, senior vice president, business development, Amazon.com. "Foxit has an industry-leading PDF technology that we think will make the customer experience for PDF's on Kindle even better - we’re excited to back such a great team."

"We are honored to be working with Amazon to provide high-quality rendering of PDFs for Kindle," said Eugene Y. Xiong, CEO for Foxit Corporation. "With over 100 million users, Foxit PDF software continues to find increasing adoption among the Fortune 500 for its breadth of PDF features, blazing speed, affordability, security, and high quality."

Foxit's PDF solution provides the platform independence, lightweight footprint, performance, and display quality to provide a superior user experience across multiple platforms with no loss of quality or consistency.

...the rest of the story

Download.com serving up malware

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (James_A) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:36:30 -0500

Download.com a.k.a. C|Net download.com is no longer a safe location to download programs, because it now wraps the software in a Trojan Installer, detected as malware by major Anti-Virus programs.

This story was first reported back in August on the ExtremeTech site, when VLC was "trojanised" by Download.com. See "Download.com wraps downloads in bloatware, lies about motivations"

Now it has re-emerged, because another well-known program used by Computer Security testers (nmap) has also been "trojanised" by Download.com:

I've just discovered that C|Net's Download.Com site has started wrapping their Nmap downloads (as well as other free software like VLC) in a trojan installer which does things like installing a sketchy "StartNow" toolbar, changing the user's default search engine to Microsoft Bing, and changing their home page to Microsoft's MSN.

The installer is actually detected as malware:

In fact, if we UPX-unpack the Trojan CNet executable and send it to VirusTotal.com, it is detected as malware by Panda, McAfee, F-Secure, etc: http://bit.ly/cnet-nmap-vt

That bit.ly link will redirect you to virustotal.com for the test results.

Looks like download.com is no longer a safe place to go, for any downloads.

Steve Jobs dies at age 56

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:43:23 -0400

Earlier today, Apple's very own Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56 due to a rare form of pancreatic cancer. His death happens just a day after Apple announced the iPhone 4S.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being", the company said. "Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple".

According to the LA Times, Jobs was diagnosed in 2003 with pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, which produces islet cell or neuroendocrine tumors. This form is usually less aggressive than pancreatic exocrine cancer and patients can live longer, with the average survival rate more than three years. Some people with the neuroendocrine form can live as long as 20 years. He had a liver transplant in 2009 and took an extended medical leave from Apple last January. Several forms of treatment are available.

Microsoft kills MacDefender scareware botnet

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:26:42 -0400

Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit has shut down a botnet that was investigated for hosting the MacDefender scareware that preyed on Mac OS X users.

The botnet, known as Kelihos or "Waledac 2.0," has been linked to spam messages, ID-theft attacks, pump-and-dump stock scams and websites promoting the sexual exploitation of children, according to Microsoft senior attorney Richard Domingues Boscovich.

The botnet contained about 41,000 computers worldwide and was capable of sending 3.8 billion spam e-mails per day.

For the first time since Microsoft's anti-cybercrime team started disabling botnets, the company moved to the U.S. court system and identified a defendant that allegedly owned the domain that controlled the botnet.

In the complaint, Microsoft names Dominique Alexander Piatti alongside dotFREE Group SRO and John Does 1-22 and said they owned domains and subdomains that were used to operate and control the Kelihos botnet.

Welcome to the new, updated Lunarsoft

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:31:20 -0400

Over the past two weeks we have been working hard behind the scenes to prepare for a much needed update to our frontpage software. We have made sure that the theme we use would be up to date and match our forums along with ensuring our plugins would be up to date as well. While we did have to wait for a few plugins, the time quickly passed as we worked diligently on getting the theme reskinned.

There are still some bugs that we're ironing out but everything should be working good as ever quite soon! If you encounter any bugs, please let us know about them on the forums.

Brothersoft celebrates ninth anniversary

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:01:55 -0400

Brothersoft is celebrating their 9th anniversary and they want to celebrate it with you. You have a chance to win a Brothersoft 9th Anniversary Limited Edition tshirt. Interested? Here's how you can enter to get a shirt.

1. Click the "Join" button and tweet the activity news.
2. Follow Brothersoft on Twitter
Then you will be considered for this giveaway. The Winners will be picked at random, so everyone will have the equal chance. Remember the rate of winning prize can reach 50%.

Brothersoft is one of the top download websites available on the Internet. They keep getting better and better.

Here's to another great year, Brothersoft. Looking forward to celebrating your 10th anniversary with you all!

Lunarsoft Forums are upgrading

webmaster@lunarsoft.net (Tarun) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:12:18 -0400

The Lunarsoft Forums are offline while upgrading to the latest version. We will have updates posted on our Facebook feed as to everything that is happening. Feel free to Like and follow what's happening at the Lunarsoft Facebook page.

This post will also be updated once the upgrade has successfully finished.

The forums have been successfully updated. Enjoy!