Microsoft implements BlueHat prize tech

LAS VEGAS -- A year ago this week, Microsoft announced a startup-style contest with serious reward money called BlueHat to get security researchers to apply their expertise to innovative defenses. Today, the company revealed that the efforts of one of the three BlueHat finalists would be incorporated into their Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit tool.
Mike Reavey, the senior director of Microsoft's Security Response Center, explained that the BlueHat contest process was a big win for Microsoft. "In less than a year, we were able to solicit for ideas, receive them, implement them, and get them to customers," he said during a phone call with CNET last week.
The new version of EMET, as the tool is known, will soon ship with Return Oriented Programming (ROP) defenses "inspired" by the work of BlueHat finalist Ivan Fratric, Microsoft said in a press release announcing the tool upgrade. "ROP is an advanced technique that attackers use to combine short pieces of benign code, already present in a system, for a malicious purpose," Microsoft explained.

YouTube asks users to post real names for commenting

An official Google screenshot featuring test user “Joey Samson,” formerly known as “joeysam87,” which shows the interface for converting an anonymous YouTube account to a Google+ account. YouTube has begun asking anonymous commenters to merge in their real names and photos. Photo: YouTube

YouTube is pushing its notorious commenters to name themselves.

When you comment on, or upload a video, YouTube will now urge you to “start using your full name on YouTube,” and ask if the video-sharing site can begin displaying the identity you’ve associated with your Google+ account (assuming you use Google’s social network). If you decline, Google makes you select a valid reason, like “My channel name is well-known,” as BetaBeat noticed this morning. (Google didn’t mention that wrinkle when it announced it would be rolling out this option.)

Defcon 20: Skillz, thrills for the whole hacker family

This year's hacker show has something for everyone, from hardware hacking and zero-day contests to con games and nerd-core rappers. Plus: Black Hat ropes in Apple to talk iOS security.

LAS VEGAS - You might not think that a hacker conference in Sin City in the summer is the best place to take the kids. But if you want them to learn some skills, know their digital rights and have some fun, I can't think of any place better. Oh, and there's some stuff for us big kids too.

Defcon, which turns 20 this year, runs Friday through Sunday, following the more corporate Black Hat conference, the newsy parts of which are tomorrow and Thursday.

Black Hat organizers had a rocky start to their week with a security issue of their own. One of their volunteers sent 7,500 attendees a suspicious e-mail that appeared to be a phishing scam. The message asked recipients to confirm a new password that supposedly had been requested and directed them to a dicey-looking URL. "We have reviewed the server logs, we know the user, host, and have spoken with the volunteer who has emailed each of you this morning," Trey Ford, general manager of Black Hat, wrote in a blog post, without saying exactly why it happened. "The email this morning wasn an abuse of functionality by a volunteer who has been spoken to."

Malware attack spread as email from your office's HP scanner

In these high-tech times, scanners and photocopiers aren't just dumb machines sitting in the corner of the office.
They are usually connected to the corporate network, and - in some cases - can even email you at your desk to save you having to wear out your shoe leather.
And it's precisely this functionality that we have seen cybercriminals exploiting today, pretending that their malicious emails in fact come from an HP scanner inside your organisation.
Here's a typical example of the emails we have been intercepting at SophosLabs:

Subject: Re: Scan from a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 4952740
Message body:
Attached document was scanned and sent to you using a Hewlett-Packard I-56919SL.
SENT BY: SHERRIL
PAGES: 7
FILETYPE: .DOC [Word2003 File]

As you'll see in the next example, the precise wording (the names and numbers used) can vary from email to email. But each of the emails has the same file attached - HP_Document.zip.

So, what's in the ZIP file?

hp_page-1-19_24.07.2012.exe

Clearly that's not a scanned-in image - it's executable code.
In fact, it's a Trojan horse called Troj/Agent-XDD, capable of infecting your Windows PC and putting your computer data at risk.
Here's a list of some of the different subject lines we saw in this spammed-out malware campaign, in the just the course of a few seconds:

We've seen malware spread as scans from HP devices in the past, but there has been a notable wave of malicious code spammed out using the disguise today - so be on your guard.
If you are one of the many people seeing this malware attack in your email today, please do not click on the attachment even if you are waiting for a scanned-in document to be sent to you. Instead, simply delete the email and your computer will be safe.
by Graham Cluley on July 24, 2012

Amazon Kindle Fire To Be Reduced To $169 After Kindle Fire 2 Launches?

This is hardly a surprise, but DealNews is reporting that Amazon’s Kindle Fire will experience a price drop to $169 after the new Kindle Fire 2 launches later this year. Amazon has a history of keeping older kindles around, at lower price points, when newer ones are released. According to DealNews, the Kindle Fire 2 will slide into the $199 price point.

This tactic is similar to how Apple positions its older iPads and iPhones when new versions come out. The strategy allows one manufacturer to cover multiple price levels, increasing their potential audience.

Of course, Amazon is now forced to compete with Google’s popular Nexus 7 tablet, which is leaps and bounds ahead of the original Kindle Fire spec-wise but still costs just $199. Sales forecasts for the original Fire have already been cut due to the Nexus 7′s success. Reducing the original Fire to $169 and launching the Fire 2 at $199 would essentially allow Amazon to compete with the Nexus 7 on two fronts.

Looks like the era of low-cost and genuinely usable tablets is here, folks. This is the kind of competition that helps drive innovation. Even big bully and litigious Apple will be getting in the smaller tablet game with their rumored iPad Mini, but I doubt theirs will be under two bills.

source: dealnews
via: ubergizmo