CNN, one of the US’s biggest media giants has been threatened by pro-Chinese activists as a target for attacks due to their unjust coverage of issues that concern the motherland (China). CNN International the web site, indeed suffered some form of DoS attacks which lasted 20 minutes but was halted due to unknown reasons. CNN has been criticized as too critical of the way the Chinese has handled the events in Tibet and that people are mad with their so-called one sided reports. The events in Tibet were hidden from the rest of the world when the Chinese cut off all internet connections and banned Western reporters from entering the area. Anyone caught within the exclusion zone were hastily sent out of the country in efforts to control the information that gets out of the territory which is moving for independence from China’s communist ways. Reporters were however allowed in only with strict government supervision.
The group claims to represent a majority of the Chinese public who have expressed disgust at how Western Media have been harassing China over issues that spans the whole country, from Tibet to the prevalence of piracy in all forms and shapes, China has managed to top all lists that lists it as haven for the top Hacker’s of the world, tainted goods and many more.
The attack on CNN was called off due to the news getting out and any attack could then be stopped. The exploratory attack did manage to impede access to users of CNN interactive but for the rest of the Western world there was no significant slowdown noticed. These kinds of attacks as well as others that have been targeted at many governments China have called as enemies of the state are commonplace, mostly being detected and dealt with promptly. There were repeated attacks on the Department Of Finance’s web site where identified hackers from China (where they were traced), and the US’s department of Homeland security has repeatedly called for the government to do something about such attacks. Many other such attacks that are aimed towards US firms have been found and discovered which raises the question wether the battlefield has moved into cyberspace not on the ground.
Heavyweight Windows – Imploding?? (Part 2)
Imagine having a form of windows that would run on the first versions of the P4 Intel Chip or on a Celeron, or the newer EEE’s and Ultraportables, wouldn’t that be a greener proposition than having to send tons upon tons of old computers to the recycling center (chips, computer chips are one of the most polluting products on earth due to the strict environment controls and exotic materials that are used in making them. The bad thing is that they’re so well made, recycling them to recover the precious metals can only be done through incineration to vaporize most of the packaging just to get to that precious couple of milligrams of silicon, lead or gold (plus many other exotic stuff they now use on these microprocessors).
Microsoft might still have it’s place in one of the most used Operating Systems but it’s time surely is numbered if they fail to follow suit on the open-system bandwagon which can have a basic web-server running on an old Pentium systems up and running in no time. Vista’s a flop (no doubt about it) and the announcement of a new OS from the software giant has put off more from shifting (even with the announcement of the mandatory phase-out of the selling of new machines bundled with XP). The genius of Bill might be needed (even though he has left the helm of the company again to come up with some concoction that would maintain the company’s grip on the industry it has so benefited from. “You see that light flashing in the corner of your eye? That’s your retirement light, and it’s flashing a bit faster every day)!!”
Heavyweight Windows – Imploding?? (Part 1)
Many have been saying that time will come when the grip of Microsoft’s Windows on the market would be threatened by its own weight, the time is now. Gone is the time of the one size fit’s all philosophy and this is evident in their introduction from XP to Vista which not many prefer. The main reason, reliability of XP that has evolved since it was first introduced way back 2003. The OS has become so stable that it took the place of Windows 98′ as the preferred OS with all the right stuff in one neat package. That monopoly which has been held by the market is based on a one product fits all (through trim down versions and other editions such as the Media Center from 2005 which capitalized on the area of multimedia) This goes for all applications, from the home desktop, office laptop and desktops to server OS systems that are now feeling the crunch as people shift to more open-systems such as Ubuntu and Linux.
Why shift from a stable system developed by the industry’s largest and best developer, well, first they’re not the best anymore for the open-systems have gained ground allowing older PC’s to work at par as the latest multi-core driven computer systems. These alternate Operating Systems are developed and maintained by a group of industry experts and all users get to voice their needs and initiate changes according to relevance. The control Windows had with all the support and software updates coming from one big global company which sometimes doesn’t get what the user really wants (well, mostly really) has fed up most of us. Useless updates that make old systems slower, excessive overhead (in terms of disk space, memory and processor needs) and the notion that software drives the hardware development industry hand in hand rather than the hardware doing the same.
Microsoft XP 2003 and BEYOND
Yep, Microsoft the every surprise filled software developer who made Vista has now announced that the company will be extending the life of Windows XP till 2010. This overturns earlier announcements that they would be ending support and phasing out(which includes stopping the selling) of the most stable Windows Operating system ever. This is to give way to the newer Windows version, Vista which has again and again disappointed users even with the much promised improvements with SP1 (what…where?????? the improvements….. I see bugs, tons of them) which has failed to impress users from around the world. Big businesses are wary of the new operating system due to stability and support issues (which is only gathered from many years of continuously refining a program like XP, you’d think they’d have learned) which is still quite shaky at best.
The European arena isn’t too impressed either with the many lawsuits the company faced due to unfair commercial practices the software giant has allegedly committed(found Guilty and fined millions of Euros). The move may be a sign of what some bloggers are calling as a “continuing fiasco” regarding Vista’s capabilities which are irking more and more users everyday, having them revert to their old’ reliable XP installations for getting the simplest jobs done. Worst of all, better and improved versions of software from open-sourced communities and organizations is forcing big-M to do something fast for more and more are shifting to them for they are faster and better than Explorer with little overhead that eats up precious memory, hard disk space and video power.
Just hope the company would be more realistic than with their sudden twists and turns such as they have been doing in the last months regarding Yahoo and the announcement of other unusually generous gestures(again) from the company that is big-M.
Anti-Virus Programs – Losing Teeth
Recent studies are showing that having merely traditional Anti-Virus Programs Installed onto a computer is proving to be highly ineffective with today’s code morphing malware. The complexity and uncanny ability of these malware to change signatures defeats most if not all intrusion prevention systems. Hackers have also capitalized on the fact that users trust content that is seemingly from legitimate sources like the recent incident with a Goggle Mail application which is used to archive email from the email company’s servers which incorporated information gathering code. The problem was only found when a programmer unknowingly de-compiled the program and found an email address along with a log-in password to the program author’s mailbox. Upon using the derived information to get into the email account, he found several user information along with usernames and passwords of others who have used the program. He took drastic steps and deleted all information (email) he found not to be the author’s and informed the company which released the program about the incident. The developer simply said an error checking routine or some draft code was arbitrarily left within the released version. They promise not to do so in the upcoming versions of the said archiving program…. Yeah Right.
People have been warned again and again regarding the risk of getting free software and other free stuff that seemingly comes from legitimate sources (not the developer’s page) for they may have embedded payload which they unload once installed. Current Trojans also use swift actions to copy itself onto all peripherals(flash disk, digital camera, digital media players, PDA’s and other similar devices which can hide the code) attached to the system it infected so even a complete Operating System reinstall would only result in reinstallation if re connected to the same system. Other malware simply use the email addresses within certain programs like outlook and messenger sending out copies of itself to all those listed and infecting further computers as it travels all over the world.
The scenario has come to the point experts are talking about implementing a white list of sorts of all valid applications, sources for all legal and safe systems which are to be allowed access to their systems. This would have a sort of inventory program which keeps track from online sources of trusted sites and sources of files and rejecting those which are not included. Manual inclusion would be the Achilles’ heel of such an audit system for any wrong addition would again make it vulnerable to attack.
Economics – the driving force of Mobile Spying Malware
Experts have said it again and again and history has shown us that money is the root of all evil and so it goes the same for the development and eventual spread of more sophisticated malware intended for the ever growing mobile computing environment. Current malware is simple yet experts are warning users and other experts alike that it would only be time before some hacker develops a more robust and discreet form of malware that would circumvent standard virus scanners. As we have seen and read in news articles, these viruses, Trojans and other forms of malware are evolving so fast that removal and detection experts are finding it very hard to get one step ahead of them. In the time it takes to read this post, about 35 or so new types of malware would have been released into the wild to infect any of the millions of unprotected systems over the internet. The problem has gone into the pandemic stage that no system is safe for long. The soonest a new and more robust intrusion prevention and security system is in place, several new vulnerabilities in the computer systems we use are found and immediately exploited by hackers and their minion.
Economics or the promise of earning a buck from such malware creation and spreading is the major motivation for hackers. Say you get into the cell phone of your favorite Celebrity and get hold of private pictures, or get hold of a confidential report which lists the amount of funds along with the corresponding account information and much more information that one can sell quite profitably over the internet.