Critical Java hole being exploited on a large scale

Criminals are increasingly exploiting a critical hole in the Java Runtime Environment to infect computers with malicious code when users visit a specially crafted Web page. According to a security blogger, the reason for this increased activity is that the arsenal of the BlackHole exploit kit has been extended to include a suitable exploit. The hole patched by Oracle in mid-February allows malicious code to breach the Java sandbox and permanently anchor itself in a system. Varying types of malware are injected; for example, it is believed the hole is exploited to deploy the Zeus trojan. According to an analysis by Microsoft, the dropper is distributed across two Java classes. The first class exploits the vulnerability to elevate its privileges when processing arrays, and then executes a loader class that will download and install the payload. Users can protect themselves by installing or updating to one of the current Java releases: Java SE 6 Update 31 or version 7 Update 3.

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first published week of:   03/26/2012

Cyber security is weakest link in state preparedness, according to FEMA survey

Although States have made huge strides in emergency and natural disaster preparedness, they are still vulnerable to cyber disasters, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Preparedness Report released May 4. The study said despite progress across core areas such as planning and operational coordination for natural disasters, and information sharing among intelligence agencies on terror activity, States indicated cybersecurity was their weakest core capability.

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first published week of:   05/07/2012

Cyberheists 'a helluva wake-up call' to small biz
by brian krebs

A $180,000 robbery took the building security and maintenance system installer Primary Systems Inc. by complete surprise. More than two-dozen people helped to steal funds from the company's coffers in an overnight heist in May, but none of the perpetrators were ever caught on video. Rather, a single virus-laden email that an employee clicked on let the attackers open a digital backdoor, exposing security weaknesses that persist between many banks and their corporate customers.

The St. Louis-based firm first learned that things were not quite right May 30, when the company's payroll manager logged into her account at the local bank and discovered that an oversized payroll batch for approximately $180,000 had been sent through May 29. The money was pushed out of Primary Systems’ bank accounts in amounts between $5,000 and $9,000 to 26 individuals throughout the United States who had no prior interaction with the firm, and who had been added to the firm's payroll that very same day.

The 26 were “money mules,” willing or unwitting participants who are hired through work-at-home job schemes to help cyber thieves move money abroad. Most of the mules hired in this attack were instructed to send the company’s funds to recipients in Ukraine.

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first published week of:   11/12/2012

Dressing Up an E–Reader for Style and Comfort

E–readers are functional right out of the box. But when consumers start using them, many find that they are craning their necks awkwardly, constantly wiping the screen with their sleeves, or holding some readers to the light at night while straining to read others in the sun.

Help is at hand. The marketplace for e–reader and tablet accessories is booming; Amazon.com alone features more than 2,000 Kindle–related items. Plenty of choice is available in products at all price ranges to make the reading/browsing/touching/viewing experience more enjoyable — or at the very least less annoying.

What accessories users want depends in large part on the e–readers they own. For example, basic e–readers — like the Kobo Touch, the Sony Reader, the $79 Kindle and the Nook Simple Touch — use E Ink technology, which replicates the experience of reading on a printed page. Still, it can be hard to read at night on these devices, so a light accessory can be helpful.

Other e–readers — like the iPad, the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet — use LCD technology, which offers an enhanced visual experience so users can play games and watch video. Users can also read with ease at night on these tablets, so no extra light is needed.

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first published week of:   02/20/2012

Embedding ArcGIS Online maps in Facebook

ArcGIS Online maps can be used in many different ways and in many different applications — including ArcGIS for Desktop, ready–to–use web and mobile viewers, configurable applications and templates, and custom apps you build using the JavaScript, Flex, or Silverlight APIs, or mobile SDKs.

ArcGIS Online maps can be embedded into websites, blogs, and even Facebook. [Here’s] an example that just went up today on Esri’s Facebook.

This virtual tour of the Esri campus was created by using the Motion-X GPS iPhone app to capture a path walked through the campus along with photos that were shared on Flickr. See the map details for more information.

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first published week of:   04/30/2012

Embracing geotagging: how to journal your trips
by Darren Murph

Geotagging. It’s not exactly a long, lost art, but it’s certainly not something most folks bother to do after a trip. Avid travelers, hikers and the general outdoorsy crowd have been embracing the feature for years, though, and it’s actually seeping into the mainstream without most individuals even noticing. How so? Smartphones. Given the proliferation of iPhones, Android handsets and Windows Phone devices making their way onto the market — coupled with the explosive use of geo–minded social networks like Path, Instagram and Foursquare — an entire generation is now growing up in a geotagged world. Phone users have it easy; so long as there's a data connection and an embedded GPS module (commonplace in modern mobile devices), there lies the ability to upload a photo with a patch of metadata embedded. Snap a shot at a national park, upload it, and just like that, viewers and friends from around the world now have an idea as to what a specific place on the Earth looks like.

For travel hounds like myself, that’s insanely powerful. I'm the kind of person that'll spend hours lost in Google Earth, spinning the globe around and discovering all-new (to me, at least) locales thanks to the magic of geotagging. It's sort of the photographic equivalent to putting a face to a name. By stamping latitude, longitude, altitude and a specific time to any given JPEG, you’re able to not only show the world what you saw, but exactly when and where you saw it. It’s a magical combination, and with GPS modules finding their way into point-and-shoot cameras — not to mention external dongles like Solmeta’s magnificent N3 (our review here) — there’s plenty of opportunity to start adding location data to your photos. For more on the “Why would I want to?” and “How would I best display ’em?” inquiries, let’s meet up after the break.

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first published week of:   08/06/2012

Volume 31

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