You may don’t find your way home with Apple Maps but you can see a top secret military base in Taiwan. The ultra-high-frequency radar they have can be used to detect missiles that could be launched by China and it is now public thanks to Apple and its effort to create map services. It is possible that China was familiar with the radar but it doesn’t hurt to have a clear high definition picture as well. We will assume that this was an accident because if it is not then conspiracy theories are endless. Thank you Apple for making me smile today. Now my mistakes look very small and I thank you for that.
Anonymous takes down Greek government websites
Anonymous took down several Greek government websites and the reason is maybe the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is not the first time that Anonymous takes down Greek government webpages and if they continue to support the people of Greece then it will not be the last. A big percentage of the people there is fighting to survive and any kind of support is appreciated. Police and government didn’t upgraded their security enough since the last attack by Anonymous.
Backdoored PhpMyAdmin from SourceForge
PhpMyAdmin is one of the most popular MySQL administration tools written in PHP. A compromised version of PhpMyAdmin was distributed via a SourceForge mirror and after a security issue was reported, malicious people exploited it. That version had server_sync.php modified and the backdoor is allowing to the attacker to execute PHP code remotely. Because of the fact that SourceForge is the largest open source software development website, if infected many systems. This is not the first time attackers exploit the open source community to distribute their backdoor.
Companies are mocking iPhone 5
iPhone 5 launched and smartphone companies started mocking Apple’s new product. Samsung was the first one with another ad with title “It doesn’t take a genius”. Samsung is comparing its Galaxy S III with the new iPhone. Based on the characteristics Galaxy S III is superior to iPhone 5. Samsung is the first but not the only one, Nokia is mocking the new iPhone with a twitter based Lumia campaign. Even the newest iPhone does not support NFC which is making some of the Apple fans unhappy. Samsung and HTC are not happy with the LTE that the iPhone 5 now supports and we may see another legal battle.
App Store can be bypassed without jailbreaking
Apple’s App Store is vulnerable and can be bypassed easily, even without jailbreaking. ZonD80, a Russian hacker found a way to bypass the payment and get paid apps for free. The amazing thing is that it is very easy and almost everyone can do it. The idea is to communicate and send the purchasing requests to a server operated by the hacker instead of the official one. ZonD80 posted a video on YouTube showing his hack but the video was deleted by Google and now he is requesting donations to setup a website to promote his hack.
Malware for all systems
F-Secure, a finnish security company recently found a malware which installs itself to almost all operating systems. It is a web exploit which recognizes the OS of the visitor and then installs the corresponding malicious code for that OS. This one is not installed on your system unless you approve a Java applet installation. In all operating systems the code does the same thing, it connects to a command and control server (with IP 186.87.69.249) and then it downloads additional code to execute. The name of this scary but intelligent malware is GetShell.A. There are millions of malware out there and you can’t be too careful.
Yahoo Voice Hacked
Yahoo! Voice has been hacked and 400,000 passwords were leaked. If you use Yahoo Voice then you should change your password A.S.A.P. Also, if you are using the same password on other websites and services, now it is a good time to change those too. Once again, the hack was based on SQL injection. Yahoo! has released a statement where apologizes for the attack to the users. If hackers have the password of your email account then they can access any other accounts where you used this email to sign up.
MacBook users should use Firefox
Some MacBook users experienced with system crashes recently. Most of them were using Chrome and as it turns out this was the reason. Chrome has a graphics resources leak and that was making MacBook to freeze or crash. Google has fixed the problem but my opinion is that you should already have Firefox. Based on the last five compares Firefox is the best browser. Mozilla is doing a great job and it keeps its gem to the first place.
Good news for our Indian friends
Indian internet users couldn’t access several websites including file-sharing, torrent and video streaming sites. Some of those websites were The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and Vimeo. Imagine their frustration not having access to their favorite websites and not be able to share. Internet Service Providers were forced to block those websites and now the court relieved them, and their clients, by unblocking torrent sites. I don’t know how I will react if they block my access to certain websites.
Intel CPU Vulnerability
A flaw has been found on Intel chips and hackers can exploit that vulnerability to gain access to your computer using the operating system. So far hackers exploited the vulnerability on Windows 7 64bit, Free BSD, NetBSD and there is a big chance to be exploited also in OS X. Attackers can use the flaw to execute code on your system with kernel privileges. AMD processors do not have that flaw as they don’t use the buggy SYSRET instruction. Affected operating systems are aware of that and they are preparing a fix, some of them were even pushed an update so there is a big chance that your system is safe (if your OS is up to date).