Development
Twitter suffers yet another cyberattack
Aug 12th
Twitter downtime is increasing these days. A series of assaults on the site,last week, resulted in frustration of over 20.1 million Twitter users. A new attack, reported yesterday, continued this series.
San-Francisco-based Twitter said:
We’re back up and analyzing the traffic data to determine the nature of this attack
Twitter was target of a DDOS (denial-of-service) attack last week , along with Facebook and LiveJournal. Hackers flooded the sites with requests, causing them to slow down and crash.
Twitter commented on that saying:
Twitter continues improving system response such that inevitable denial-of-service attacks such as those we saw last week don’t interfere with normal operations,We make every effort to keep folks updated.
The site was claimed to be shut down entirely on 6th August. Sending Tweets feature was not available even after 24 hours of restoring the site.
Twitter said:
Defense measures caused some of the disruptions. The site was shut down entirely Aug. 6. The next day, many users could not send updates, known as Tweets, via short messaging service and other applications.
Here comes WordPress 2.8.4
Aug 12th
It seems that we will be getting a new version of WordPress every week. The latest in this regard is that WordPress 2.8.4 has been released. Again this latest version comes out as a security release. The reason which prompted the WordPress team to release this version was because a vulnerability was discovered one or two days before.
The vulnerability allowed to issue a request for a specially crafted URL, thus enabling the hacker/attacker to evade the security check for verifying user request for a password reset. the result of which appears in the form of an unsolicited password reset.
Also this release solves all the known problems. It is recommended to get hold of this latest release as soon as possible. This is how WordPress announced it.
Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.
We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.
Download WordPress 2.8.4
25% of people in Newzealand use facebook
Aug 11th
Hang on guys, this news is really unique. We have always heard of about Facebook‘s following in United States and Europe being awesome. But have you gone and look into different regions. Don’t worry we are not asking you to go and do so. Well the news which I am going to share you is quite unique and rare. Here it goes: Around 1 million people in Newzealand are active on Facebook and use the ever popular social network in their own ways.
Every single month, about 30% of the population down under in Australia or in other words 6.5 million Australians use Facebook. NewZealand has just recently crossed an impressive milestone. The number of active Facebook users in the country has crossed one million which means that almost 25% of the population is now active on facebook. The Facebook Global Monitor reveals that the current monthly growth rate is 31%.
NewZealand has accepted and embraced facebook with both hands. As a matter of fact, facebook happens to be more popular than any of its competitors in the country. You will be excited to know that Kiwis have their own perspective when it comes to using Facebook and have used Facebook for non-traditional and unorthodox purposes. One such example is the NewZealand authorities used Facebook to capture a criminal after a video was posted about a thief on the Facebook.
On a related note, Facebook is making efforts to expand itself in the region by opening its regional offices in Sydney. Expect facebook’s popularity and monthly visitors to increase since apps are coming that are specifically target users of this region.
Digg on the way up, gaining its lost ground
Aug 10th
All you Digg lovers, good news for you. According to the stats collected by comScore, Digg performance is on the way up and is showing positive progress since the month of June. According to an estimate from comScore, Digg managed to brought in an impressive figure of 8.8 million unique visitors and that to in America alone. This shows a 33 percent increase in comparison to the three months before June. It is believed that all this has happened due to the addition of new and exciting features by Digg.
Digg itself admits and acknowledges that this is the factor behind this improvement. Digg says that once it introduced the Diggbar, it saw an initial lift in visitors all this happened due to people passing around short links. But all the thanks should not go to Diggbar alone. The other changes that Digg made also improved the site’s performance. These changes include:
- Search Feature introduced in May
- Addition of Facebook Connect.
- Digg Dialoggs. (Allows users to suggest and vote on questions of be asked during a video interview conducted by Digg founder Kevin Ros)
Wifi standard 802.11n in its final stages
Aug 9th
From Wired we gather that , the latest standard for Wi-Fi i.e. 802.11n is almost complete. You would be glad to know that this standard promises to provide upto 600 mpbs. That is really fast believe me. A huge amount of effort and development has gone into this Wi-Fi standard.
This latest technology will not only bring an impressive transfer rate of 600 mbps but also the possibility of streaming of about four simultaneous streaming audio, data and videos of HD (High defintion) quality. Mike Concannon who happens to be the senior Vice President of Qualcomm highlighted what would this latest standard bring
At the least we can get six times the speed of the current 802.11g standard, that means we can transmit high definition video across multiple rooms in a pretty large house with just one access point.
This technology is surely going to have a huge impact at the home network. It would speed the process of streaming videos is double quick time and will altogether eliminate the need to wait for the video to stream before you can watch it. Will Strauss who happens to be an analyst suggested that videos are the principal entity that will benefit from this latest arrival. According to him
Speed is everything and videos are the main driver for this technology. When you are home you want to get to YouTube fast and watch video and have a phone connection and surf.
This latest sensation from the Wi-Fi is set to be released in the month of September. Let us see how people receive this technology.
Twitter still suffers from DDOS attack
Aug 8th
It is the second day and Twitter is still suffering from the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack about which we reported earlier as well. Twitter is still plagued with major issues as far as stabilizing its service is concerned. Biz Stone, Twitter’s co founder has posted a new update on the situation on the Twitter blog today. It seems that the DDOS attacks are far from over. Stone believes that these attacks are geopolitical in nature. According to him
The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations. The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability.
The co-founder again insisted that no data or personal information has been compromised thankfully. He went on to say that this is not the last time we are seeing a DDOS attack. His words were
Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon
This is very sad indeed. Something needs to be done and done immediately. This is a time where one can become a superstar or hero by fighting off these unfortunate and undesirable attacks.
Microsoft to release nine security patches on 11th August
Aug 7th
Microsoft is really active when it comes to releasing security updates. The latest in that regard is right here. On 11th August, the IT giants has plans of releasing nine security bulletins as Microsoft calls it. Among the patches is a patch that is designed to address the vulnerability that exists in Microsoft Office Web Components. Spreadsheet ActiveX control happens to carry the bug. When ActiveX control is used in IE, control may potentially corrupt the system state thus allowing an attacker to run arbitrary code. The bug affects Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, ISA Server, BizTalk Server. Four bulletins rated critical are set to address issues in Microsoft Windows, with one of them also affecting Windows Client for Mac.
The remaining four bulletins are rated as important by Microsoft and will be dealing with security bugs in Windows. Within these four, two cover privilege escalation part whereas the remaining two handle issues related to remote code execution and DOS (denial of service issues).
Unfortunately, Twitter is down at the moment
Aug 6th
Are you in a situation just like me? Have you been trying hard to access Twitter,but were unsuccessful to do so?. Don’t worry you are not alone. I am facing the same problem. And guess what, an event has taken which frankly all twitter lovers would hate to hear about. I tried long and hard to access twitter but that would just not happen. In the following paragraph, I share with you guys how I came across this horrible news which I am going to share with you. Here it is :Twitter is down. Twitter confirmed this unfortunate news and stated:
- We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.
I just reached my home and straight away navigated to the ever popular microblogging network, Twitter. In my first attempt, it opened but not completely, so I tried the refresh option which sadly made the matter even worse as it display ed the Page Not Found message, which frankly I hate to see. I tried once or twice but it would not open. I thought that it was a maintenance issue. So I decided to give it a rest. I tried the same thing after giving it a rest for a few minutes. Again the same annoying thing appears.
Windows 7 RTM contains a chkdsk bug
Aug 6th
Microsoft will be distributing Windows 7 RTM to MSDN/TechNet and testers today. What will be the response of the audience receiving Windows 7 RTM after receiving this news , I am not so sure. But anyhow here is the problem, Windows 7 RTM is said to posses a chkdsk bug. When the chkdsk command is executed it causes a nasty memory leakage.
When the CHKDSK /R command is executed on a non-system volume, the bug becomes active. Memory used by the chkdsk process increases upto 90% of physical memory. In some cases, it may cause the system to become unresponsive and unstable.
People have started making their own analysis as to what will happen now. Some believe that the chkdsk bug is a show stopper for Windows 7 while others say it could potentially delay the arrival of Windows 7. What is the actual truth, no one really knows.
But here is the question, Is it a show stopper in reality?. The answer thankfully is no. The reason is quite simple, even though the bug is bad, but the frequency of using chkdsk utility on a system is quite low. Reports yet to be confirmed reveal that Windows VP Steven Sinofsky has come out claiming that this issue is really a controller issue, and can be fixed using updated drivers. Microsoft can always use Windows update to push out updated drivers. Sinofsky states:
In this case, we haven’t reproduced the crash and we’re not seeing any crashes with chkdsk on teh (sic) stack reported in any measurable number that we could find. We had one beta report on the memory usage, but that was resolved by design since we actually did design it to use more memory. But the design was to use more memory on purpose to speed things up, but never unbounded — we requset (sic) the available memory and operate within that leaving at least 50M of physical memory.
Still we await a response from Microsoft officials regarding this matter. Let us hope that this bug is not a showstopper in anyway.
Google acquires video compression software maker On2 for $106.5M
Aug 5th
Google has just spent a huge amount of money. Google has purchased On2 Technologies, the makers of video compression software for 106.5 million dollars in stock. The software maker’s compression software compresses videos in more than 2 billion computers (desktop) and mobile devices. It compresses videos worldwide for well known companies such as Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Sun Microsystems and Sony.
Why would Google take this move, you ask. Well the answer is quite simple, this technology has the potential to serve Google’s video sharing sit YouTube in an excellent way. Sundar Pichai, Vice President, Product Management, Google said in this regard:
Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform
Google currently has no clear idea or path as to how it would go about using On2 assets. Jeremy Doig, engineering director for video and group product manager said:
Although we’re not in a position to discuss specific product plans until after the deal closes, we are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2 Technologies’ team and technology will help us further that goal.
On2 technology promises and provides
- Faster encoding
- Easier playback
- Smaller files
- Faster download times
- Reduced streaming delays
- Lower bandwidth costs without compromising visual quality.
It remains to be soon how efficiently Google utilizes their latest purchase. All I can say is that we may expect faster download time and less streaming delays when using YouTube.
