Buzz Out Loud 1392: There is no Matrix (podcast)

Brian Tong returns from the islands in time for us to get collectively punked by a surprisingly elaborate rumor about Keanu Reeves and two more Matrix sequels. But that's nothing compared to the punking that is AOL's subscription service, which generates 60% of its profits and isn't needed by pretty much anyone who pays for it. Ouch. Plus, the tech bubble is our new drinking game and the white iPhone ... never mind. We're not talking about that damn thing anymore. --Molly

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EPISODE 1392

NEWS

Motorola Xoom launching February 17th at Best Buy (update: priced at $700)

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/22/motorola-xoom-launching-february-17th-at-best-buy/

Google acknowledges Web spam problems

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229100049&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All

http://searchengineland.com/google-may-let-you-blacklist-domains-to-fight-spam-62129

Mozilla offers do-not-track tools to thwart ads

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20029284-264.html

Foursquare Valued at More Than $250 Million, May Seek New Funding in 2011

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-23/foursquare-valued-at-more-than-250-million-to-seek-new-funding.html

http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/01/24/2010infographic/

Nvidia’s Tegra 2 3D unveiled

http://www.techeye.net/chips/tegra-2-3d-unveiled

60% of AOL’s Profits Come From Misinformed Customers

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/01/23/1251254/60-of-AOLs-Profits-Come-From-Misinformed-Customers

Facebook Agrees to Change ‘Friend Finder’ Feature

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,741027,00.html

Apple App Store Hits 10B App Download Mark

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/01/23/1836228/Apple-App-Store-Hits-10B-App-Download-Mark

$10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank [Exclusive]

http://www.cultofmac.com/10k-itunes-winner-hung-up-phone-on-apple-exclusive/78231

Rumor Mill

Production of Apple’s iPad 2 to begin in February, iPhone 5 in May – report

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/24/production_of_apples_ipad_2_to_begin_in_february_iphone_5_in_may_report.html

Report: Sony PSP2 to Have 3G Connection, OLED Sc

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376156,00.asp

Quick Hits

Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant Gets Android 2.2 Upgrade

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Samsung-Galaxy-S-Vibrant-Gets-Android-22-Upgrade-308312/

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/01/24/some_samsung_galaxy_s_owners_finally_getting_android_2_2

White iPhone 4 appears in AT&T's online system

http://www.bgr.com/2011/01/24/white-iphone-4-appears-in-att-online-system/

Geek Pop

WikiLeaks: the Movie to blow whistle on ‘most dangerous man in the world’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/21/wikileaks-movie-biography-julian-assange

The Matrix Re-Reloaded

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/01/24/1319214/The-Matrix-Re-Reloaded

Happy Ending

No app for this: Croc gulps phone, starts ringing

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbQ6jGc_CRgwA53s5W3hPattuzXg?docId=7d4f8013791046f5be31ad24abdcd75e

VOICEMAIL

Ken from Seattle: the dumb*ss has a warrant

EMAILS

I’m surprised no one mentioned this, but Living Social’s coup last week (the Amazon gift card frenzy) could mean the bursting of Groupon’s “”bubble.”" It certainly highlights what Molly’s been saying all along: Groupon’s business model is easily replicated. All it takes a little help from Amazon, and Living Social had as much name recognition in one day as it took Groupon a year to build up.

Side note: Friday, when Jeff was trying to explain to Wilson what Groupon was (apparently no one in NY uses it), Dan chimed in and said, “”Oh, so it’s like that Living Social thing with the Amazon gift cards, right?”" Ouch!

(Sorry, I might be confusing Bakalar, Ackerman, et. al. All those guys sound the same to me.)

love der show,

Raymond in Athens

—–

Hey Buzz Crew,

Let’s face it whenever anyone is set up on a blind date these days your 1st stop is Facebook to see how much, or how little, info you can find about the person. So having just been given a # I hopped on Fbook to check out my prospective date. Unfortunately the profile picture was not helpful and her photo albums were not available (or so it seemed). I notice that there was a picture posted on her wall and when I clicked on it I was shocked to find that I was given access to the entire album that contained the photo. So by scrolling down the wall and clicking on posted pictures I was able to access several photo albums containing dozens of photos. Now this may just have been due to loosely set privacy setting, but I was able to drill down into photo albums via wall posts on a few other random Facebook pages as well. So my takeaway on this is 1. change those convoluted privacy setting to only share your wall with friends 2. while this flaw exists you may as well do a little computer love recon before those blind dates…

Love the show

Glenn

in Sunny South FL

—–

Hello Everyone,

I see one major problem with that Starbucks a payment app that you've talked about. Considering all the buzz and fuss about security, how does it make sense to use (essentially) a static bar code to pay for something? I mean think about the sheer number of camera phones around coffee houses... you prep your code, someone takes a snapshot of it, doctors the image a little so it looks like the right app and bam. Now you're buying them free mochas and Starbucks merchandise and have no clue that you're doing so until you go and check your cell phone bill. Yes I agree that paying for things with our cell phones is an interesting idea, but this just seems to be a really poor idea for how to do it, since it would be so easy for someone to steal your Starbucks ID... besides who needs another something to worry about? We already have Credit Cards, SSI#'s, Drivers License... you get the idea.

Enjoy the Show,

Chris

Hey CNET crew,

When you first started talking about the “”Brian”" streak you were surprised someone would plug in that data and figure it out, someone asked “”Who does that?”".Well I have a coworker in the IS department where I work that is just that person. The cafeteria at work offers plastic mugs that are 34 oz. and the standard cup is 24 oz. You can buy the plastic mug and get fill it up for the same price as the standard cup. So to gauge its worth this employee actually made a ROI for it, and came up that it would take 72 refills to break even on your initial investment. So even though I wouldn’t of ever thought to do that I guess there are some people out there that just think that way. I would also like to say congratulations on keeping the “”Brian”" streak alive. And I love the show.

Brad

—–

http://bol.cnet.com, 800-616-2638 (CNET), buzz@cnet.com

TWiT 285: My Donkey Knows More Than You

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Tom Merritt, Mathew Ingram and Simon Dingle

Schmidt, Jobs, 10 billionth hang-up, good old games, Watson's victory, Elmer's leaks, lying diplomacy, wireless=warrantless, and more.

Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/twit.

For additional show notes, visit the wiki page for this episode. Links to stories we covered (and then some) are available from Delicious or in our Friendfeed Room.

Transcript posted 24 hours after show release by PodsInPrint.

Audio bandwidth is provided by Winamp, subscribe to TWiT and all your favorite podcasts with the ultimate media player, download it for free at Winamp.com.

Google Chrome 8.0.552.237 and Chrome OS 8.0.552.334 released ==> http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/01/chrome-stable-release.html and http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/258423, (Thu, Jan 13th)

Google Chrome 8.0.552.237 and Chrome OS 8.0.552.334 released ==> http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/01/chrome-stable-release.html and http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/258423, (Thu, Jan 13th):

Learning Malware Analysis

If you happen to be studying at the Aalto University in Helsinki, there's one lecture you don't want to miss tomorrow: our Chief Research Officer Mikko Hyppönen will open the course on Malware Analysis and Antivirus Technologies.

This is a course that we've arranged in co-operation with Aalto University for the past three years. It's always a joy to see people pick up reverse engineering skills and learning malware analysis. Every year we create homework puzzles for the students to test their skills on. This spring Timo, who is working here at the Labs, will be creating the puzzles for the course. Timo is also the author of the T2'10 Challenge, which started off like this:



If that looks strange to you, you can also turn it into a picture:



Does it still look weird? Do you think you'd enjoy solving more puzzles and getting course credits for doing it? Then we hope to see you on the course!

If you're not a student at the university, you can view the course material from the course page, where we'll post new material as the course progresses.

On 18/01/11 At 08:28 AM

"

Malware referencing Julian Assange

While browsing through incoming malware samples, we noticed this one.

It's an unremarkable malware dropper (md5: 5aac5fc644f5b2797683c2acb337297a).

The somewhat interesting thing on this malware is that it drops a Russian version of Notepad and opens it up for the user to see this message:



We detect this malware as Trojan-Dropper:W32/Agent.DQJN.

CO2 phishing

The European Union caps the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) a company may emit in a year.

Companies exceeding their emissions quotas can buy them from companies don't need them.

This creates a market for buying and selling emission certificates. A very big market. Market big enough to interest online criminals.

If the criminals are able to log into an online trading system with a company account, they can sell the emission rights and pocket the money. This involves changing the bank account in the system to point to an account of a money mule.

As a result of this, there have been several attacks trying to gain access to EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS).

All emission trading in EU was halted yesterday as the latest attack was discovered. Certificates valued at over 28 Million Euros were stolen.



'The thefts could have been a concerted action because the recent incidents happened within the last few days', said Maria Kokkonen, a spokeswoman for EU climate policy.

We've seen targeted phishing scams that have been emailed to people in charge of emission trading. These have been sent in various languages.

Here's two example phishing emails, in German and in Finnish:





Here's an example of a website EU has warned about multiple times. It is not related to European Commission.



Sites like tradingprotection.com and europeanclimateregistry.eu have been registered either with false information or with domain protection systems:



As a result of these attacks, national emission trading systems are getting rid of authentication with just a username and a password, and are introducing stronger authentication systems. These include multi-factor and SMS authentication systems.

In Finland, logging to the emission trading system already supports using bank account multifactor authentication schemes:



PS. The commenting system in our blog is broken for at the moment. We'll get it fixed shortly.

On 21/01/11 At 11:51 AM

What would you ask from the creators of the very first PC virus?

It's now January 2011. Which means the Brain virus is now 25 years old



Brain, spreading on 5.25' floppy disks was the first PC virus.

Which means that the PC virus is now 25 years old.

So, what did brain do? Let's look at our virus description database, which - of course - has a description of the virus.



As you can see, the Brain virus contains contact information for 'Basit and Amjad' in Lahore, Pakistan.

Due to this 25 year milestone, I've decided to go to Lahore, Pakistan. I'll go there to find Basit and Amjad, and I'll speak with them about how they feel about the phenomenon they started.



Of course, writing a boot sector virus in 1986 was a completely different thing than writing, say, a banking trojan in 2011. For one, writing viruses was not illegal in 1986. People did not know at the time if writing viruses was a bad idea. We learned that later.

But it just boggles to mind to think about how much has happened in these 25 years.

So, what would you like to ask from the writers of the very first PC virus?

Post your suggestions to our blog comments. I'll take the best ones with me to Lahore.

Yours,
Mikko

On 24/01/11 At 01:52 PM