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Monthly Archive:: May 2011

Apple Enacts ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’-Policy for Mac Malware

I have personally tried to pretty much let the whole MAC Defender trojan thing pass by, since we're not a security website. However, we have an interesting turn of events this week. An article over at Ars Technica quotes several anonymous Apple Store employees as saying that the infection rate of Macs brought into the Apple store has gone up considerably. More interestingly though, Apple's official policy states that Apple Store employees are not allowed to talk about infections to anyone - they're not even allowed to inform Mac owners if they find the infection without the customer's knowledge. Another interesting tidbit: Apple mandates the use of Norton Antivirus on company Macs, according to one Apple Store genius.

MeeGo 1.2 Release

"Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo 1.2. This release provides a solid baseline for device vendors and developers to start creating software for various device categories on Intel Atom and ARMv7 architectures. The MeeGo 1.2 Core OS provides a complete set of enabling technologies for mobile computing." Highlights include significantly enhanced connectivity, a switch to QML, and the release of a development preview dedicated to tablet devices.

Eric Schmidt: Anti-piracy Laws Disastrous for Free Speech

Wait - is this for real? A large American company openly defying the anti-freedom and totalitarian content industry? In comments in the UK media, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took aim at the big content-sponsored PROTECT IP act. The PROTECT IP act is the US internet censorship (the China kind) law, which more or less takes aim directly against Google. In his criticism, Schmidt went far - very far. The content industry obviously isn't pleased.

OSnews Asks on Interrupts: More Results

Having read the feedback resulting from my previous post on interrupts (itself resulting from an earlier OSnews Asks item on the subject), I've had a look at the way interrupts work on PowerPC v2.02, SPARC v9, Alpha and IA-64 (Itanium), and contribute this back to anyone who's interested (or willing to report any blatant flaw found in my posts). I've also tried to rework a bit my interrupt handling model to make it significantly clearer and have it look more like a design doc and less like a code draft.

GNOME Discusses Becoming a Linux-only Project

Something's - once again - brewing within the GNOME project. While a mere suggestion for now, and by no means any form of official policy, influential voices within the GNOME project are arguing that GNOME should become a full-fledged Linux-based operating system, and that the desktop environment should drop support for other operating systems such as Solaris and the BSDs. I have a feeling this isn't going to go down well with many of our readers.

OS Devotees as Religious Supplicants

Well, this will come as no surprise to OSNews readers, but as outlined in a recent BBC documentary, UK neuroscientists have studied brain scans of hard-core Apple fans and have found that their mental reactions to Apple imagery are quite similar to scans of religious devotees' brains when shown images of their iconography. The DigitalTrends article summarizing the finding singles out Apple users, but I think we all know that, RDF aside, this is not an Apple-only phenomenon.

Mac Protector: Fake AV Targets Mac OS X Users

"A little over two weeks have passed since the appearance of MAC Defender, the fake AV solution targeting Mac users. And seeing that the approach had considerable success, it can hardly come as a surprise that attackers chose to replicate it. This time, the name of the rogue AV is Mac Protector, and the downloaded Trojan contains two additional packages. As with MAC Defender, the application requires root privileges to get installed, so the user is asked to enter the password."

Intel: No x86 Compatibility on ARM Version of Windows 8

The ARM version of Windows 8 might have just become the most desired version of Windows in our hearts and minds. After us talking about legacy code and backwards compatibility in Windows for years now, an Intel senior vice president, Renee James, has just stated that Windows 8 on ARM will not have any form of compatibility for legacy applications whatsoever. Update: Microsoft has responded to Intel's claims. "Intel's statements during yesterday's Intel Investor Meeting about Microsoft's plans for the next version of Windows were factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading," the company said, "From the first demonstrations of Windows on SoC, we have been clear about our goals and have emphasized that we are at the technology demonstration stage. As such, we have no further details or information at this time."

VDPAU on Radeon Starts Working

Efforts to implement NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) on the open source Radeon Gallium3D drivers (for AMD/ATI chipsets) are reportedly just beginning to work. Being Gallium3D-based means this new VDPAU state tracker is using GPU shaders and not the dedicated Unified Video Decoding (UVD) engine found on modern Radeon HD graphics processors, but using shaders is still a big performance win for HD video playback compared to pegging the CPU constantly. Also, MPEG-2 is the only codec known to work at this time. Once the basic state tracker functionality works, support for other video codecs, such as VP8 and H264, should be relatively easy to add.

Javascript Emulator Lets Linux Run in a Browser Tab

The name Fabrice Bellard may not be recognizable to a lot of people, but the work he carries out as a programmer and computer scientist is. . . . He is a very talented programmer, and his latest project demonstrates once again just how talented he is. Using the super-fast JavaScript engines that now come as standard in popular web browsers, he has managed to create a PC emulator that runs in a browser. As a demonstration he has posted a link to a version of the Linux kernel running in such a scenario.

Microsoft Investigates Current Threat Landscape

Microsoft published volume 10 of the its Security Intelligence Report which provides perspectives on software vulnerabilities, software vulnerability exploits, malicious and potentially unwanted software, and security breaches in both Microsoft and third party software. Microsoft found out that vulnerabilities in applications versus operating systems or web browsers continued to account for a large majority of all vulnerabilities in 2010, although the total number of application vulnerabilities declined 22.2 percent from 2009. The exploitation of Java vulnerabilities sharply increased in the second quarter of 2010 and surpassed every other exploitation category that the MMPC tracks, including generic HTML/scripting exploits, operating system exploits, and document exploits.

Is Microsoft trying to end the reign of mobile carriers?

Are Microsoft, Apple and Google quietly preparing for war with mobile carriers? I think so. With all the advancements in mobile phones in the past 10 years, the part that’s been woefully slow to advance is the phone part. Making calls, placing calls, searching for signal and scrimping minutes hasn’t changed much since the phone came out, because carriers have little motivation for innovation.

Sony Starts Downplaying PSN Security Fail

Now that the Playstation Network is back online, the great downplaying by Sony has begun. Sony CEO Howard Stringer has been making the rounds in the media world, talking about the massive security fail, and in his eyes, it's not that big of a deal. He calls it a 'hiccup', something that happens to all large networks.

France Halts ‘Three Strikes’ Law After Data Leak

"The French government's 'three strikes' approach to online copyright infringement relies on a private company that scans file-sharing networks and gathers the IP addresses of alleged Gallic content pirates. But that company, TMG, suffered an embarrassing security breach last week, and the French government has 'temporarily suspended' its acquisition of new TMG data while an investigation is underway." Yeah, the company that collects IP addresses of alleged file shares got Sony'd.

Windows 7 Network Awareness: How Does it Work?

"Whenever I connect to a WiFi network which requires in-browser authentication, such as university networks and hotel access points, Windows somehow magically knows. Windows also knows when your internet connection isn't working, and can differentiate between having local LAN access, no network access at all, or full internet access. But how?" Windows 7 actually phones home to a simple Microsoft Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) site for this functionality to work, and there, IP address and date of lookup are stored. Windows is flexible, however - you can turn this off, or even set up your own, personal NCSI server so that you will retain the functionality, but won't contact Microsoft. Pretty neat.

Miguel De Icaza Announces New Company

Two weeks ago we covered the news that the Mono development team were let go kicked out by the new owners of Novel, Attachmate, apparently to move operations to Germany. Miguel de Icazza, founder of Mono, has taken this opportunity to break off on his own and has started a new company, Xamarin, to bring commercial .NET development products to iOS and Android.