Category: reader

Mattel introduces the new Welfare Barbie.

Paul

[ad#ad2-left]Mattel will be introducing the new welfare barbie doll,or laying off 1,000 jobs. According to Bloomberg and I’ll quote:

Mattel Inc., the world’s largest toymaker, said it would cut about 1,000 jobs, or 3 percent of its global workforce, as it faces higher manufacturing costs amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

[via Bloomberg]

If you’re like me and you want to cringe every time you hear another place is laying off people. I say we are still in a downward spiral. Everyone is saying that even Jason Calacanis, in his recent email he sent to all his fellow readers, he talked about the Rich not buying anything they didn’t need. He said that is good, I however wonder how far the hole goes before we hit rock bottom.

[ad#ad2-right]According to some analysts, they are talking about this lasting another year or more. On another note, according to Kotaku and I’ll quote on this one to:

We have received a letter purportedly sent by THQ CEO Brian Farrell to explain to his employees the reasoning behind the company closing five studios and laying off staff from two others. The closed studios are Helixe, Sandblast Games, Locomotive, Mass Media and Paradigm.


[via Kataku]

Now I’ve talked enough about Layoffs in the past and I won’t talk to much but I do hope this changes in the new future. If you want to find the other ones that I talked about just search my site, they are all there with out any problems.

[Thanks to Kyle Rees for the suggestion on the heading]

Microsoft Windows Server Service Vulnerability (MS08-067)

Paul

A vulnerability has been identified in Microsoft Windows, which could be exploited by attackers to take complete control of an affected system. This issue is caused by an error in the Server service that does not properly handle specially crafted RPC requests, which could be exploited by attackers to crash an affected system or execute arbitrary code via a specially crafted request.

On Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, the vulnerability is only exploitable by authenticated users.

Note: This vulnerability is being exploited in targeted attacks.

[via FrSirt]

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This was just discovered and needs to let people know. I will do more research on it and maybe come up with a way to fix the problem. According to my sources there is a patch that will fix the problem!!

*UPDATE*
According to Microsoft:

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Server service. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected system received a specially crafted RPC request. On Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability without authentication to run arbitrary code. It is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect network resources from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter.
[Via Microsoft Security Bulletin]

What’s with Google trends?

Paul

Having been going to the Google Trends and keeping watching.  I am starting to wonder something?  Take a look at this and you tell me?

Oct 20,2008 Google Trends

[ad]Can you see how someone might use this to create a Goog-411 and use it to promote there website? It is all about the hits and getting what publishers like to say the eyes on a website. Now is that going to confuse people or make people not want to come to a site.  So how would people abuse this?

Very Simple, they’d watch what is trending and post accordingly.  Now you as a reader would click on the website expecting to see what you want to see but instead it would popup with advertisements and maybe malware?  Check these links to better understand it:

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Now even though these are just a few.  You can see how someone might want to abuse it and get there site up on Google trends and be able to infect several to even millions of computers before Google sees that or stops.  You could in theory take over a website high in Google rankings and do exactly that.

Then I have to ask myself, why would hackers want to do it in the first? One they’d be able to direct people to sites that they could use to phish your information, or maybe make money by you going to these sites. It is all about money, I don’t say that lightly, but it seems to always be true.

So what is Google doing to prevent this? is it right to use Google for your advantage? Do we need it for anything other than to see what people are looking at? Is that a form of them tracking your every click.

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Are you comfortable with them keeping the list of what people searched for last year? if you don’t believe me, go check it out yourself. These are important questions to answer and should be explored.