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.
Online Ads
Internet users do not realize that they are been watched by online companies. Most of us are not taking measures to ensure our privacy and anonymity. You search for flowers on Google and then you visit a site with Google AdSense and you see ads for cheap flowers in your area. You see the ad and you notice that it is interesting without realizing how this ad appeared in front of you. Internet companies are following you everywhere and they know what you want, what you like and what you do. If that doesn’t scare you then you are naive and lucky! You are traced by cookies and some browsers that store your data. If you want safer browsing use Firefox.
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).
Unreal Engine 4
This is the elemental demo video of the Unreal Engine 4 by Epic. The architecture of this new Unreal Engine offers fully dynamic lighting features. Watch the video and see how realistic is and what incredible thinks can be done with this engine. This is very promising for the future of PC gaming and maybe this is a good time for me to buy a better PC. In addition the new Unreal Kismet gives the possibility to designers to create and put directly into the game without help by programmer. Also, Hot Updates allow programmers to make changes and see the effect of those changes immediately to the game, even pause is not needed. Finally, Live Kismet Debugging allows you to see and interact with the game while testing it. There is nothing more to say, jump to Unreal Engine 4 and start creating games for us to be amazed.
Microsoft and dancing
Microsoft loves software developers and loves dancing and they always combine those things in the events. Most of the times, as you can also see from this video, programmers don’t dance. They barely move listening to a song but they enjoy watching energetic women dancing. I like programming very much but I don’t like the lyrics of the song. I found it very funny, you will too if you are a software developer. Don’t expect to see a high quality video as it was shot from a smart phone.
Change your LinkedIn password
Part of LinkedIn database was leaked and millions of (encrypted) passwords are now in the hands of hackers with potential malicious use. Even though encryption is strong this doesn’t mean your password is safe. They can find your password with a brute force attack and they will do it because they are not cracking one password which might not be worth the time but they can crack millions of passwords simultaneously. It is a matter of time until they crack the passwords and the best protection now is to change your password so even if they find which was the password it will now be different and don’t be able to access your account. If you don’t change the password and your account is hijacked then don’t complain about it because is your fault.
NSA as Big Brother
NSA is recording all forms of electronic communications and is doing it without any court-approved warrants which are required by any other agencies. The number of the recorded communications is about 1.7 billion in a daily base. This includes emails, phone calls, sms texts and any other form of electronic communication. The numbers are very scary and some people are still unaware of that fact. If you put that text in hard copy it is equivalent to 138 million books, every day. NSA has as many employees as FBI and CIA together and its data center in Utah is 5.7 times larger than the U.S Capitol. This is not the only data center NSA has, there are dozens of them, but it is the largest. Next time you will pick up the phone, be careful of what you say because everything is recorded, everything.
Windows 8 logo and old Greek flag
Microsoft spent time and effort to design the new logo of Windows 8. I assume that they wanted something simple because someone can create it in minutes. The result is not something new, it is a very old design from Greece and they used it as a flag between 1822 and 1978. To be fair enough, it is not exactly the same but the similarities are very obvious. The cross is thinner and there is a rotation, it is more like a redesign than a new innovative logo. There are variations of the flag of Greece that have similar color with the Windows 8 logo, thumbnails are not very good for the comparison, you can click on them and see the full size.