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Monthly Archive:: August 2010

AV Vendors Detect On Average 19% Of Malware Attacks

Traditional AV vendors continue to lag behind online criminals when it comes to detecting and protecting against new and quickly evolving threats on the Internet, according to a report by Cyveillance. Testing shows that even the most popular AV signature-based solutions detect on average less than 19% of malware threats. That detection rate increases only to 61.7% after 30 days. Even after 30 days, many AV vendors cannot detect known attacks.

Threads or Cores: Which Do You Need?

Anyone contemplating a new computer purchase (for personal use or business) is confronted with new (and confusing) hardware choices. Intel and AMD have done their best to differentiate the x86 architecture as much as possible while retaining compatibility between the two CPUs, but the differences between the two are growing. One key differentiator is hyperthreading; Intel does it, AMD does not. This article explains what that really means, with particular attention to the way different server OSes take advantage (or don't). Plenty of meaty tech stuff.

How to Revitalize Mature Computers

In previous OSNews articles I've claimed that discarded computers up to ten years old can be refurbished and made useful to someone. They shouldn't be discarded. They should be refurbished -- fixed up and reused -- rather than recycled -- destroyed and separated into their constituent materials. So how does one do this? In this and several subsequent articles, I'll describe how to revitalize older computers.

Blackberry OS 6

RIM announced Blackberry 6 yesterday, along with a new device called the Torch, to be released in the US on August 12. Users of some older Blackberry devices will be able to upgrade to the new OS, but unfortunately the upgrade will not be extending too far back in the product line (Bold 9700, Bold 9650, Pearl 3G). A Cnet article has a nice rundown of the new feature, which are no secret, because RIM has been keeping up a steady stream of information and video demos of the new OS for several months.

Workstation Benchmarks: Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux

Here is the continuation of a series of comparison tests that is without doubt bound to cause a huge amount of controversy: Workstation Benchmarks: Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux There are performance wins and losses on both sides of the fence, but Ubuntu compares very well with Windows 7, and no doubt these tests indicate a much closer performance comparison than most people would have expected.

BlindElephant: Open Source Web Application Fingerprinting Engine

In this video recorded at Black Hat USA 2010, Patrick Thomas, a vulnerability researcher at Qualys, discusses the open source web application fingerprinting engine BlindElephant he created. BlindElephant is a tool that helps security professionals and systems administrators identify everything running on their servers, including any web applications users may have downloaded. It doesn't check for vulnerabilities or vulnerability to a particular exploit, but rather what version of applications are running on their site. For each application that the tool will support, BlindElephant consumes a number of version directories. All files and directories are processed, and a hash is computed for each file. This hash is stored in a temporary table, along with the path and version of the application it came from. Accuracy of the tool was demonstrated by a large-scale survey on Internet-visible hosts.

Courage, Class, and Canonical

Greg DeKoenigsberg set off what would become a firestorm of debate in the Linux community last week when he posted rant against Canonical for their low ranking on number of commits to GNOME, based on a recent census study. Over the weekend, DeKoenigsberg apologized for the rant and explained in a more measured tone why he lashed out in anger at the findings of the GNOME Census, then again later at Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth's response to the debate, a broader argument against tribalism.

Kingston Introduces Water-Cooled HyperX Memory

The newest member of Kingston's performance memory series is the HyperX H2O. As you can probably guess from the name these DDR3 memory modules are liquid-cooled, with the line running along the top of the heatsink. The kits will come in dual- and triple-channel varieties in 4GB and 6GB capacities. The 2×2GB kits come in frequencies of 2000MHz or 2133MHz.

Who Really Contributes the Most to Linux?

As we mentioned in a previous article, Red Hat advocate Greg DeKoenigsberg claimed that due to the much larger amount of code it's contributed, Red Hat is a better open source citizen than Canonical, adding, "Canonical is a marketing organization masquerading as an engineering organization." A Computerworld blog retorts that that's no insult; and that marketing Linux could be just as important to the cause as contributing code. Updated

What’S New in Linux 2.6.35

Measures to support the power saving mechanisms of AMD graphics chips, network code optimizations for multi-core processors, features for de-fragmenting the working memory and an improved support of the power management and turbo features offered by modern processors are among the highlights of the new kernel version. After a development time of almost two-and-a-half months, Linus Torvalds has released version 2.6.35 of the Linux kernel.

Possible OpenSolaris Fork?

A recent vague announcement on osol-announce hints that something big is rumbling for OpenSolaris: "A number of the community leaders from the OpenSolaris community have been working quietly together on a new effort called Illumos, and we're just about ready to fully disclose our work to, and invite the general participation of, the general public." They have a website, and they're going to be hosting a conference call on August 3.

KDE SC4 Architecture and What it Means for the Future

KDE SC 4.0 was released in January of 2008 and KDE SC 4.5 will be released shortly (August 4th, 2010), roughly two and a half years later, and it is time to reflect on what KDE SC4 seeks to accomplish and how well it is doing in its goals. The critical shift KDE SC took in this series is abstracting the desktop from the underlying system through three pillars, phonon, plasma and solid making the desktop some sort of a virtual platform environment and easily portable to other operating systems.

JailbreakMe Returns: Easy iPhone 4 Jailbreak

A few years ago, there was a website called Jailbreakme.com that enabled you to jailbreak your iPhone without iTunes, by just visiting a web site. But it stopped working with one of the OS updates, so people forgot about it. Well, it's back. I've actually been waiting to jailbreak my new iPhone 4 and for an iOS 4 jailbreak for my old iPhone 3GS, but after fiddling around with downloading big ipsw files from sketchy websites only to find they didn't work, I decided to wait for an easier option.