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Security

WordPress Sites Under Attack From New Zero-Day In WP Mobile Detector Plugin (softpedia.com) 50

Posted by BeauHD from the man-your-battle-stations dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A large number of websites have been infected with SEO spam thanks to a new zero-day in the WP Mobile Detector plugin that was installed on over 10,000 websites. The zero-day was used in real-world attacks since May 26, but only surfaced to light on May 29 when researchers notified the plugin's developer. Seeing that the developer was slow to react, security researchers informed Automattic, who had the plugin delisted from WordPress.org's Plugin Directory on May 31. In the meantime, security firm Sucuri says it detected numerous attacks with this zero-day, which was caused by a lack of input filtering in an image upload field that allowed attackers to upload PHP backdoors on the victim's servers with incredible ease and without any tricky workarounds. The backdoor's password is "dinamit," the Russian word for dynamite.
Piracy

Google Proposes Fighting Piracy By Blocking Ad Money 202

Posted by Soulskill from the george-carlin-would-approve dept.
judgecorp writes "Google has published a report, written by the Performing Rights Society and BAE Detica, which says the way to fight piracy is not to chase the sharers, but to cut off the money in the system. 'Some 86% of advertising on the pirate sites surveyed by Detica comes from networks that have failed to sign up with the UK’s self-regulatory bodies or commit to strong codes of conduct. More than two thirds of the sites that rely on subscriptions or payments display well-known credit card logos. Online advertisers should be encouraged to sign up to self-regulatory codes of conduct. Credit card and online payment facilities, the pirate’s oxygen supply, must be blocked.'But is Google absolutely sure it isn't doing that with AdSense?"

Comment Re:Cowboy Neal (Score 1) 471

by messner_007 (#35192028) Attached to: I would draw the line at cloning...
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot

"Polls – a poll is usually run on the site in the right-hand margin, asking users their choice on a variety of topics. In the earlier years of the site, one of the options that could be selected was CowboyNeal, the handle of Jonathan Pater, an administrator of the site. This became known as the CowboyNeal option.[39] During the summer of 2005, he stopped being in charge of the polls, and as a result the CowboyNeal option disappeared."
Power

Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy 365

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the scott-me-up-beamy dept.
MikeChino writes "A physicist at Tohoku University in Japan has figured out how to teleport energy from one point in the universe to another. The technique is based upon prior research that shows it's possible to teleport information from one location to another, and involves making a measurement on each [of] an entangled pair of particles. The measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system, and then by carefully choosing the measurement to do so on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy. Heady stuff, but essentially it means that you can inject energy at one point in the universe and extract it from somewhere else without changing the energy of the system as a whole."
Security

Gmail Moves To HTTPS By Default 275

Posted by timothy from the you-mean-I-gotta-log-in-again? dept.
clone53421 writes "Although Gmail has long supported HTTPS as an option, Gmail announced their decision yesterday to switch everyone to HTTPS by default: 'We initially left the choice of using it up to you because there's a downside: https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn't travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data. Over the last few months, we've been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do.' I wonder if this has anything to do with the reports of Chinese users having their accounts hacked? 'Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves,' said David Drummond in that blog update. That does sound like it perhaps could be a result of insecure HTTP traffic being intercepted in transit between the users and Gmail's servers."

Comment 12 weaks is too short (Score 1) 978

by messner_007 (#30029614) Attached to: Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss?
The observation period in this study is way too short to see an effect on body weight.

Muscles are heavier (more dense) than fat and exercise has some anabolic effect too. So in the first period a study person is loosing fat and gaining muscle mass. When the muscle amount stabilizes on the higher lever, you will see the weight drop. This effect was nicely seen in SuperSize me.

Comment Re:Laptop (Score 3, Informative) 697

by messner_007 (#29865863) Attached to: Low-Power Home Linux Server?
One thing to watch out:

I tried this with two laptops, and you have to keep the lid open, because processor overheats otherwise.

This is bad for the space it occupies and for the dust that keeps raining on the keyboard ...

With lid open, it works great.
Biotech

DNA Suggests Three Basic Human Groups 459

Posted by samzenpus from the primary-people dept.
Death Metal writes "All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made — the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens."

Comment Re:Ubuntu, Now More Popular than Windows XP! (Score 1) 414

by messner_007 (#27795969) Attached to: Linux Reaches 1% Usage Share

"It merely means that more people are searching on that term."

Thank you for your kind explanation, I meant that this means something completely different ...

Windows XP is the most used OS on this planet in this moment. People search for drivers, support, software, forums, common problems etc. A agree with you, that they type different search terms for them. But ... Ubuntu should have (according to this research) only 0,5% of the whole cake of OS-es. Isn't it strange, that this 0,5 % of all google searches get hits more often than windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.

over 50% against under 0,5% ...

It sounds a bit strange for me ...

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