Lee Mathews
The Pas, MB, Canada - http://
iPhone Rickroll exploit gets nasty, can now steal personal data
What started out as a mostly harmless annoyance coded by a young Australian lad to mess with his friends has turned ugly [Insert your own Rick Astley joke here].Intego reports that the exploit used by the ikee worm - which only swapped out users' iPhone wallpaper for a mugshot of the ginger king of the 80s - is being used to steal personal data from affected devices.
The worms are only a concern for those running jailbroken iPhone and iPod touches, of course. Still, even at Intego's estimate of 6-8% of those devices being jailbroken that puts the number at risk at well over 2 million.
It's simple enough to protect yourself - all you have to do is change your root password to something other than the default 'alpine.' Our friends at TUAW posted the following instructions:
Type: ssh root@(iPhone IP address)Turning off SSH is an option, too, but you should still change the password as well.
When prompted for the password type: alpine
Now you're connected the phone...
type: passwd
It should then prompt your for a new password -- type one that you'll remember. There's no easy way to reset it if you forget it.
Filed under: Security, Text, Web services
Send stealthy, encrypted missives via the web Norbt
I don't often need to send ultra-secure messages to people. There's just not all that much highly-sensitive information I need to communicate. If I did, though, Norbt would be a slick way to do it.
Norbt (not to be confused with Eddie Murphy's epic film character) uses client side, browser-based cryptography to secure your transmissions. Your recipient must correctly answer the secret question. Once they do, your note is decrypted and displayed for their eyes only.
You also need to provide a password when creating your Norbt - just in case you need to go back and change some of the details.
Even if you don't have a practical reason to use a service like Norbt, it's still a fun way for you and your pals to feel like you're part of some elite spy network.
This post will self destruct in ten seconds.
Norbt (not to be confused with Eddie Murphy's epic film character) uses client side, browser-based cryptography to secure your transmissions. Your recipient must correctly answer the secret question. Once they do, your note is decrypted and displayed for their eyes only.
You also need to provide a password when creating your Norbt - just in case you need to go back and change some of the details.
Even if you don't have a practical reason to use a service like Norbt, it's still a fun way for you and your pals to feel like you're part of some elite spy network.
This post will self destruct in ten seconds.
Filed under: Web services, Google, Commercial
Google announces big price cuts on paid extra storage for GMail, Picasa Web
If you want a little extra elbow room for your email, attachments, and shared photos plans now start at a whopping 20 gigabytes for only $5 per year. Not enough, you say? You'll be happy to know that Google offers up to a full terabyte for $256 annually. Granted, right now you can only use this space for GMail and Picasa Web stuff.
I think I'll be passing on that 16 TB option Sebastian screencapped for now, thanks.
At any rate, Chrome OS in on the way and that likely means we'll finally get our hands on the elusive GDrive as well. Here's hoping it does, anyway.
In the event that Google does open things up, how do their plans stack up against other popular offerings? Let's look at DropBox. For 50Gb of storage, you'll spend $10 per month. With Google's new plans, $20 will get you 80Gb - for the entire year. That's not too shabby.
Sure would be nice if we could use it for all-purpose storage. You listening, Google?
Who's with me?
Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source, Troubleshooting, Windows x64
SheepDog rounds up stray application windows on multi-monitor setups
by Lee Mathews Nov 10th 2009
If only there was some kind of digital shepherd to corral those errant windows. Hey, if not a shepherd, why not SheepDog?
It's a tiny, portable application whose sole purpose is to bring apps that have wandered back to the primary display. Fire it up, and the tray icon listens for a hotket combination to be pressed. In the options screen you can customize your key combo and also change the system tray icon.
Hit the hotkey (or right click the system tray icon and select reposition) and any offending application windows are instantly moved.
At only 20Kb, this baby is going straight on my USB flash drive with all the other handy utilities I need once in a blue moon.
Filed under: Utilities, Microsoft, Open Source
Microsoft accused of poaching GPL code used in Windows 7 USB download tool
Rafael Rivera was doing his usual Columbo routine on the MS tool's source when he found something in the code which struck him. A section relating to UDF handling appears to have been "borrowed" from ImageMaster - an open source project hosted on Microsoft's own CodePlex service. An by "appears" I mean Rivera's checks with the Reflector .Net code inspector set off the alarms.
As Rivera points out, it's not just the use of the code that is the issue here. It's also the fact that Microsoft has added their own licensing terms.
I'm sure there's some kind of saying about not doing something where you eat, and it certainly sounds like that's what Microsoft has done in this case. Innocent until proven guilty, of course - so we'll wait to see what Microsoft has to say in response in the coming days. For now, they've removed all links to the download tool.
If you're not too concerned with the hullabaloo over the code, you might still be able to find the download on some other sites. A little birdy told me MajorGeeks still has a copy...
Tutorial9 offering free icon sets, Wordpress and Tumblr themes
Freebie downloads are always welcome. By a happy coincidence, Tutorial9 is offering a 25Mb download until November 26th, 2009 which contains four Wordpress themes, three Tumblr themes, and a whole slew of icons. Better still, the whole package can be used for commercial purposes. There's plenty of good quality stuff inside, from the grungy sticker icons above to the clean, simple designs WP ...Panda CEO and CTO talk Cloud Antivirus 1.0 as download link goes live
by Lee Mathews Nov 10th 2009 {7 comments}
Panda Cloud Antivirus is one of the more talked about releases of 2009. Its new spin on the traditional antivirus model -- like many new programs which embrace cloud computing -- has been met with both praise and criticism. Panda themselves are bullish on Cloud AV, and I was fortunate enough to speak about it with CEO Juan Santana and Senior Research Advisor Pedro Bustamante. To Santana and ...With AdMob purchase, there's really no escaping Google advertising now
Anyone who owns an iPhone or iPod touch is all too familiar with AdMob. Their tiny "don't mind me, I'm not really all that intrusive" ads power truckloads of freebies in the App Store.
While you might not love AdMob, someone does. That someone is Google.
Drawn together like half-cut, lonely singles in a dimly-lit bar at happy hour, the two are about to enter a long-term relationship. As in ...Comodo Easy VPN is a fast, free Hamachi alternative for Windows
by Lee Mathews Nov 9th 2009 {4 comments}
Ages ago, I used a combination of Hamachi and UltraVNC for hassle-free remote support setups. At the time (again, this was a long time ago), Hamachi had a lot of reliability and speed issues - so I ended up switching to TeamViewer. Recently, however, I decided to revisit my options. One alternative I happened upon was Comodo's free Easy VPN application. Like Hamachi, Easy VPN supports multiple ...Five essential addons for new Firefox users (Happy fifth birthday, Firefox!)
Five years ago today, a new web browser arrived on the scene. Yes, it was Firefox 1.0. At the half-decade mark, Firefox has become a force to be reckoned with. Nearly one in four people on the Internet is now using Firefox - and that includes the entire population of Antarctica!
If Firefox users were a country, they'd be the third most populous in the world - behind only China and India - at ...
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
