The Nexus of 2024

Tag: software

  • pwn2own: the stakes just got higher

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    jon
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    Update, March 27: Macbook Air pwned and owned — in two minutes! Update, March 28: Vista laptop pwned via an Adobe Flash vulnerability. Update, April 16: Apple issues Safari patch. Props to the winners — and to Ubuntu Linux, which emerged unpwned!

  • Privacy and civil liberties: showdown time on the “Protect” America Act

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    jon
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    Update on February 12: Final votes were today. Barack Obama voted against telecom immunity — as did Harry Reid and 29 other Democrats. John McCain along with every single Republican Senator, Joe Lieberman, and 19 Democrats voted for. More here. Update on Super Tuesday: Ari Melber’s Nation article gives the current snapshot; read the thread…

  • F—ing Mac

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    jon
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    I usually love my Mac, but right now is a big exception.  When I got a new MacBook Pro earlier this year running Tiger (10.4), the migration over from my previous (two-ish year old, running 10.1 or 10.2 I think) machine went incredibly smoothly with the minor exception of no longer being able to print…

  • Poisoning squirrels in the repository

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    jon
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    Slashdot’s linked to a bunch of good stories on computer security recently. Squirrelmail repository poisoned has the catchiest title, and plus it’s about squirrels, so it goes first. What happened was that an intruder got into the site where you download Squirrelmail, and introduced a very subtle change in the code that would allow somebody…

  • How’d *that* one get through QA?

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    jon
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    Last year, Microsoft set up a Windows Live Messenger bot to let kids talk with Santa: great fun for kids, a good way to increase readership — and of course a potential wealth of information to mine to better target ads, both for the kids and their parents. Talk about win/win! They reactivated it this…