feed on feeds - 2012/06/25 - items 0 to 15

Expert: Svårt att tro att de släpper den.

En man omkom på måndagskvällen sedan hans bil gått av vägen och krockat med ett träd på länsväg 771 utanför Västerås.

Esther Schindler writes "Last year, Danny Kalev — a former member of the C++ standards committed — explained the new features in C++. Now, in C11: A New C Standard Aiming at Safer Programming, he shares an overview of the changes in C — 13 years after the ratification of the C99 standard. Kalev describes the goodies in C11, including multi-threading support, safer standard libraries, and better compliance with other industry standards."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to this newspaper article (in Dutch), the Belgian government has arrested 2 Russian and 2 Polish nationals -legally in the country- in connection to stealing 3 million EURO through hacking online banking customers.
The article reminds me a lot of a diary we brought in 2007 of a Dutch bank being hacked.In the end they managed to arrest the money mules in that case. It seems they got one step closer to those behind it this time.
It seems customers of 5 large Belgian banks that were hit by malware, money was then transferred via mules - who got to keep 5 to 10% of the amount stolen and then our 4 friends above collected it.
Now almost all large Belgian banks use solid protection of their online banking: 2 factor authentication using offline hardware tokens, different procedures for authenticating and authorizing (signing) transactions -well one of them isn't doing this essential step-, awareness campaigns towards their customers, ... And still the malware appears to have pulled off the job.
Luckily money leaves a trail that can be followed and lead to arrests of these -no doubt- mere middle men. The investigation is said to focus on a criminal organization.
Interesting are the numbers they got:

one bank: 7500 customers for a total of 1836130.52 EURO
second bank: 4900 customers for 1496012 EURO
[no data on the other 3 banks]

That's from about 250 to slightly over 300 EUR average per victim - not a huge amount. Still, given enough victims it does add up to significant amounts.
If you're using one of these advanced systems for your online banking:make sure to always validate the transactions before you authorize them, not trusting anything you see on the screen, check what you sign:the amount has to match up! Don't just match up large amounts or most significant digits or so:they're stealing hundreds, not tens of thousands in one go. Also with the upcoming holiday season out here:do only use computers you can trust to be malware-free to do online banking, so avoid cybercafes and other public computers to access your online banking.

Now don't gloat if you're not on one of these systems:you're far more vulnerable.
I've no more details at this point - and with an ongoing investigation we're not going to get all that much details of the malware and/or who's behind it for sure.
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Swa Frantzen -- Section 66 (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Ska vänta på order om att utföra attack mot ett västland.

Minst arton människor dog under måndagen i jordskred efter häftiga skyfall i östra Uganda.

En person fick föras till sjukhus efter ett drunkningstillbud strax norr om Kävlinge klockan 21.

jfruh writes "You might be a bit jealous of Andrew Weiss: fresh out of college, he got interviews with both Microsoft and Google. He discusses (to the extent NDAs allow) the differences between the two experiences, ranging from the silly (Google's famous gourmet cafeteria vs. Microsoft's gaming room) to the serious (Google's technical emphasis vs. Microsoft's focus on explanatory and consulting skills.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has released an Important update to the Windows Update function (Windows Update Agent 7.6.7600.256) because users have been experiencing update issues. Some users experience failed installation with error code 80070057 or 8007041B. Microsoft has provided a Fix it tool that can be directly downloaded here for those cases that won't automatically apply the update and the Knowledge Base article located here. Have you been experiencing this issue? Please let us know!
[1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949104

[2] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/d046bce8-38dd-4be5-8abb-5486200379a6/

[3] http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=13453
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Guy Bruneau IPSS Inc. gbruneau at isc dot sans dot edu (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

ericjones12398 writes "It's beginning to feel like a TV series, a weekly patent war drama. Apple and Samsung have consistently been going back and forth with claims of IP infringement, to the point where who is accusing who of what is exhausting to follow. The question I would like to ask and try to answer is what the opportunity costs are of pursuing litigation versus just toughing it out? Would it be more economic for both companies to live and let live, or is there value to be captured in legal finger pointing? My best guess would be that this isn't about stopping sales this quarter or next, nor is it about defending the small-scale tech features that merely mildly differentiate. It's instead about momentum and branding. Winning these cases is PR that says, we are the leaders in smartphone technology, we are the innovators."