Friday 04/03/09

Cybersecurity bill seeks to give president new powers over private-sector networks A cybersecurity bill introduced in the U.S. Senate would enable the president to shut down critical infrastructure networks during security emergencies. But that provision is drawing fire from critics. Read more...

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Simple test to see if you are infected from Conficker:
http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html

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Senators introduce bill to limit mobile spam

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Internet traffic plummets in Sweden after antipiracy law takes effect

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Attackers exploit critical PowerPoint vulnerability
'We missed this bug,' Microsoft admits, but doesn't commit to a patch

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Conficker.c controls 4% of all infected PCs, IBM says

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Three Spammers Sentenced in US for Advance Fee Fraud PC World - Fri Apr 3, 8:40 AM ET
Two Nigerians and a Frenchman were sentenced to prison Thursday for swindling people out of more than US$1.2 million in a massive e-mail scam, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

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FBI: Internet Fraud Rates Rose 33% Last Year

Internet fraud complaints to the FBI by consumers increased more than 33 percent in 2008 over the previous year, according to figures released this week.

Some 275,284 complaints were filed last year with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. In 2007, the IC3 received 206,844 complaints.

The report shows that the nation's capital appears to be home to the largest concentration of online con artists in the country. The District of Columbia ranks #1, just ahead of Nevada and Washington State, in terms of online fraud perpetrators per 100,000 residents, the IC3 found.
Permalink

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Senate bill would give feds bigger cybersecurity role in private sector

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AT&T lobbyist urges more government coordination of cybersecurity efforts

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iPhone OS 3.0 beta successfully jailbroken

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DNS Providers Under Attack
Register.com issues are causing lots of issues across the web. One reader told us, "We are struggling to keep our websites available. DNS is the problem. We are being told by Register.com that the April 1 issues are affecting them. It sounds like they are being DOS'd and are filtering certain ISPs from querying them." Another reader said, "Register.com's DNS servers have gone offline for the second time in 24 hours. They were down yesterday from about 15:45 - 18:45 and just went down again today at about 14:30 (all times EST)."

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Microsoft Security Advisory 969136

This advisory contains information regarding public reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft Office PowerPoint that could allow for remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted PowerPoint file.

At this time, we are aware only of limited and targeted attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability. If you suspect that you were target for such an attack, you can scan your computer with the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner. The malicious PPT files are detected as Exploit:Win32/Apptom.gen. Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.

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Technology: VLC 0.9.9, The Best Media Player Just Got Better on Friday April 03, @12:23PM

Matt Asay points out a recent update to VLC as they narrow in on a 1.0 release. Already a favorite of many, the open source project has made great strides in recent history towards really solidifying the position as best-in-class. This update, 0.9.9, fixes several display bugs and sees some definite performance improvements.

"If you've yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver. You can download VLC media player 0.9.9 here. It's open source, but that's not why you'll want to keep using it. You'll use it because it's better than its proprietary peers — by a long stretch.
Read More...

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