New virus infects programs built with Delphi
August 19th, 2009 | 
Author: Researchers said on Tuesday that they are seeing something unusual in the malware world–a virus that targets a development environment.
The virus, dubbed Win32.Induc, was written to infect applications built with Delphi, according to Nick Bilogorskiy, manager of antivirus researcher at Sonicwall. Delphi is used to write Windows programs, including database applications.
When an infected program is run on a machine running Delphi, the virus infects any software that gets compiled on that machine. The virus spreads the executable file of itself as well as the source code. It looks for a compiler on the infected system and re-compiles the source code, inserting its code into any programs compiled on the system.
“This malware just spreads; it doesn’t delete files or do anything malicious,” he said. “But if you create software and you have this code in it, the software will be blocked by antivirus (technology).”
Developers whose systems are infected will pass the infection on to the programs they are creating, Bilogorskiy said.
Already, two free tools that are included in certain magazine CDs and are among the top 100 downloads on some portals–Any TV Free 2.41 and Tidy Favorites 4.1–have been infected, he said. “As many as 30 percent of developers who use Delphi have this,” he added.
Sonicwall and a number of antivirus vendors have updated their software to block the virus.
Sophos has more details on its SophosLabs blog.
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New alliance aims to unite malware fight
A new alliance has been created to formalize information sharing on security protection and develop industry standards.
The Industry Connections Security Group (ICSG) is parked under the IEEE Standards Association and includes mostly security heavyweights and antivirus players. The founding members are AVG Technologies, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro.
Announcing the group in a blog post on Monday, Mark Harris, vice president of SophosLabs, said security researchers have had a tradition of sharing virus samples but that the sharing arrangements “are still based on individual relationships rather than formal agreements.”
The formation of the group makes for a “more organized” security industry, he added, in the current landscape where attacks are increasingly structured and malware samples grow at “astonishing rates.”
The ICSG currently has a malware working group, but intends to add other working groups over time.
According to a July 20 presentation document (PDF), the group aims to improve the efficiency of the collection and processing of the millions of malware file samples handled by security vendors each month by focusing on an XML-based metadata sharing standard. The standard is expected to undergo ratification by the end of this month.
Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum, said the announcement of the group was both interesting and confusing. The rationale for the new alliance was the need for a more comprehensive approach to countering malware writers, he said, but the focus of the group appears to be limited.
The group addresses “all aspects of malware and its membership includes most of the main antimalware vendors–Kaspersky being the most notable absentee–and so the ICSG represents progress on countering the so-called ‘blended threats,'” he told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail. “However, it does not seem to be taking the battle to the criminals or probing the criminals’ business networks. The focus is on setting up the infrastructure and protocols to allow rapid information sharing on threats and making the day-to-day operation of the members more efficient.
Titterington added: “I would have expected a body affiliated with the IEEE to be putting more emphasis on the development of improved methods for disrupting criminal activity and on new ways of protecting users.”
Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia reported from London.
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Posted in antivirus, Tech, World News | 
Tags: antivirus, AVG Technologies, malware, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro | 
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Newest US weather satellite captures Hurricane Bill in a “full-disk” view of the Earth.
Remote-sensing scientists call a satellite image that captures an entire hemisphere of the Earth in one view a “full-disk” image. The delivery of the first full-disk image from a newly launched weather satellite is an exciting milestone in the mission. It provides scientists and engineers with incontrovertible evidence that a new satellite—as well as the communications systems needed to deliver the images back to Earth—is ready to do its job.
On August 17, 2009, at 1:31 p.m. EST, the latest NASA/NOAA geostationary weather satellite, called GOES-14, returned its first full-disk thermal infrared (IR) image, showing radiation with a wavelength of 10.7 micrometers emanating from Earth. Infrared images are useful because they provide information about temperatures. A wavelength of 10.7 micrometers is 15 times longer than the longest wavelength of light (red) that people can see, but scientists can turn the data into a picture by having a computer display cold temperatures as bright white and hot temperatures as black. The hottest (blackest) features in the scene are land surfaces; the coldest (whitest) features in the scene are clouds.
First IR Image from Newest Weather Satellite Captures Hurricane Bill
Posted August 19, 2009
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http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=39848
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NASA Newest US weather satellite captures Hurricane Bill in a “full-disk” view of the Earth. http://tr.im/wGBn
New! Filter by image aspect ratio
googleimages New! Filter by image aspect ratio (http://tinyurl.com/p3czpg) on the advanced image search page (http://bit.ly/a0jxF)
Posted in Google, Internet |
Tags: aspect ratio, filter, Google, googleimages, new |
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EU’s exploding-iPhone investigation heats up
‘m on my third iPhone (having upgraded twice), and I’ve also owned an iPod Touch. I loved them all dearly, largely because they never exploded into flames, burning me and my family alive. Just saying.
But it seems that other people might not have been so lucky. Numerous reports say the European Commission is now looking into accounts of exploding iPhones and iPod Touches–and Apple is cooperating, according to The New York Times.
Full Story…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10312537-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
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CNETNews EU’s exploding-iPhone investigation heats up http://bit.ly/nWf06