Using secure powerful passwords is a critical part of protecting your online privacy. Many users find it hard to remember with lots of different and strong passwords. No worries, there are plenty of ways to do so.

Using Password Generators:

  Password Generators are software which randomly crafts a really secure password for you. Of course, this will be hard to remember, but you can always write those passwords down somewhere. Saving such crucial information in physical layer (e.g a paper), is not always insecure. If for instance, someone writes down their passwords in a hidden paper inside their house, which is hard to be found, then this is way more safe than storing your passwords in a .txt file on your smartphone or computer. Of course, you could try saving them in an encrypted file/struct, like a Database or an Excel file. By this way, you would only have to remember the passphrase that you have used to encrypt the file, which of course has to be powerful.

Usb Password Generators:

  Usb Password Generators are usb storage disks, which take the responsibility to remember your passwords, help you login into your accounts and keep those passwords safe. You just have to install their software, setup your services and passwords and you should be ready to go. This is a fine way, if you are willing spending some extra bucks.

Using your own crafted strong Passwords:

  This way is my favorite one. No one can steal information from your brain – at least not nowadays. In the above cases, your data could be stolen or lost somehow one day. This technique is an old school technique but the most powerful one. Being able to create 100% secure passwords, but still remember all of them is great for your online security. You can read about  How to craft secure, but easy to remember passwords here.

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  Opening a portable document format (PDF) attachment is a mundane action that most computer users around the world don't think about too often. These days, however, e-mail users may want to think twice before opening a PDF document with Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, the two most widely-used applications for PDF files.

  Technology news media outlets are reporting the propagation of a zero-day exploit that takes advantage of a potential security flaw in Adobe Reader 11.01 and all previous versions. In the case of the full Adobe Acrobat program, versions XI and below may also be compromised. According to global network security company FireEye, the zero-day exploit was detected on Tuesday, February 13th, 2013. The Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team also posted an advisory on the exploit.

The PDF Zero-Day Exploit Mechanism

  As is the case with most zero-day exploits, this malware attack arrives via an unsuspecting email source. The message will contain a PDF attachment and an invitation to open it. Computer users who have set their Adobe software to open PDF documents by default will see a sham error message that indicates a problem with a dynamic link library (DLL) file. The malware will then open a PDF document that serves as a distraction or smokescreen to execute a DLL that connects the host computer with a remote server.

  The targeted computer user will more than likely dismiss the PDF attachment and the email as spam or as an incorrectly routed message. What the user does not suspect is that a callback script has been installed and that there is an open connection with a remote computer that may be recording keystrokes or performing other nefarious function. It is also likely that the host computer may become part of a botnet to propagate spam across the Internet.

Bypassing the Sandbox

  A couple of years ago, Adobe released a major security upgrade to its PDF applications. The Adobe sandbox is a protective environment that opens documents in a way that no information is written to the hard drive and that no malicious scripts are executed. The latest update from Adobe indicates that users should be on the alert when they receive any suspicious emails that prompt them to open PDF attachments since the zero-day exploit may bypass the sandbox. Users of Adobe products should also upgrade their software versions and manually enable Protective View.

This article was submitted by Justin Garner, a blogger for CLEAR internet packages. He enjoys writing about current events, entertainment and computer networking.

References:

http://www.informationweek.com/security/application-security/adobe-zero-day-attack-bypasses-sandbox/240148529

http://www.informationweek.com/security/vulnerabilities/adobe-reader-acrobat-under-attack/240148495

http://www.informationweek.com/smb/security/adobe-plans-security-sandbox-for-reader/226000099

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What virtual drive to choose?

  Cloud computing, the processing of files in the cloud, is - in simple words - Virtual Disk space where you keep your files like on your computer. The advantage of this technology is simple: your photos, movies and favorite music is available for you regardless of which computer you're currently using.

To pay or not to pay

  For the majority of people using the e-drives, the most important is financial aspect of the offer and the space available free of charge. If you decide to pay for disk space, you should choose the best deal. Subscriptions usually are settled once a year. The Google Drive works only for monthly fee, while Dropbox, Mega and Bitcasa offers a choice of payment cycle: monthly or annually. It would seem that storing data in the cloud, technology which is still quite new and very popular, must cost a lot. It turns out that it's not always truth.

Functionality

  The table below could be a little bit misleading at a first look, because it suggests that MEGA has currently the best offer. In terms of disk space and a cost per GB - it's truth, but let's not forget about compatibility and functionality though. Disks in the cloud offers two options to archive data: upload files directly from the browser window, or sync a folder on your computer with a virtual memory. Mega gives you access by browser interface only (for now). Dropbox offers is compatible with the largest number of systems: it supports computers with Windows, OS X and Linux. Google,Bitcasa and SkyDrive work only with Windows and OS X. Cloud technologies also find use on mobile devices: smartphones and tablets.

  There are also some other extra functionalities, which are hard to compare. Google Drive and SkyDrive ,for instance, allow joint editing of documents located on a virtual server and iCloud installs applications simultaneously on all compatible devices, which makes it perfect for Apple users. The choice is up to you. I hope the table will make it easier for you.

The post Cloud drives comparison – Google drive, Dropbox, Skydrive, iCloud, Mega, Bitcasa appeared first on Software In Action - News, reviews, tutorials, tips and tricks..

  I want to make it clear that it is just a rumor, but if it is true, it would be a huge breakthrough in Microsoft policy. Michael Larabel, author of the blog Phoronix, which has repeatedly been accused of making things up, reports that Microsoft is considering making Office for Linux. I do realize that it may sound unbelievable, but keep in mind that the same author reported about the Steam client for Linux (which turns out to be true).

   The source of this news comes from the FOSDEM (Free Open-Source Developers' European Meeting) in Brussels. Michael was one of the guests and during the meeting, he got informed that Microsoft is seriously considering moving to Linux Office, due to the increasing number of pc's with Linux.

   Currently, the only way to use Office on Linux, is to run the 2010 version in Wine - win32 libraries implementation for Unix-like systems. This solution, however, has no value for a business usage. No one does guarantee the stability of the application and there is not technical support provided.

   Many people have doubts that Linux scenario for Microsoft Office is possible. Skeptics should be remember that Microsoft is planning to release Android and iOS version of Office, which was reported by The Verge. Releasing a Linux edition on the desktop, at first glance seems to be a mistake: what about the sales of Windows, boosted by the need to run Office? In the case of OS X you could even justify it by the popularity and the cost of mac's machines - hardly anyone will spend few thousands dollars for a secretaries workstation. Linux, however, can be easily run on almost any PC, so in many cases purchasing a Windows license would not make sense.

  On the other hand, however, it may be that maintaining a long term monopoly on office software, is for Microsoft more important, than a monopoly in the operating systems market(which is not as significant as it was in the 90's). In a situation where more and more public institutions around the world decided to migrate to Linux desktops, and as a result, migrate to LibreOffice or OpenOffice, the availability of the standard - from a business perspective - Microsoft Office, could effectively stop the weakening of the position of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won - Linus Torvalds

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  I'm sure you already heard about the popular commercial package Norton Ghost®. The issue with these kind of applications is that it takes a lot of time to multi-clone systems to many workstations. You've probably also heard of Symantec's solution to this problem, called Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition®.

 Today I would like to present you an open source clone system solution called Clonezilla which supports unicasting and multicasting. Clonezilla allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla server edition. Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (over 40!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC's Classroom C, Clonezilla SE was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously.

  Let me just quote the features from the developers site:

• Filesystem supported: (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, btrfs of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, and (5) VMFS3 and VMFS5 of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, and FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, no matter it's 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
• LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
• Boot loader, including grub (version 1 and version 2) and syslinux, could be reinstalled.
• Unattended mode is supported. Almost all steps can be done via commands and options. You can also use a lot of boot parameters to customize your own imaging and cloning.
• One image restoring to multiple local devices is supported.
• Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massively clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
• The image file can be on local disk, ssh server, samba server, or NFS server.
• Based on Partclone (default), Partimage (optional), ntfsclone (optional), or dd to image or clone a partition. However, Clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
• By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

If you would like to test it by yourself, you can find it on http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

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  Not long time ago we could read an article, written by a vice president of Microsoft - Dave Heiner. He was complaining about the Google politics which "prevents Microsoft from offering consumers a fully featured YouTube app for the Windows Phone". The same Microsoft which blocks everyone out of incorporating their DirectX API on any other OS than Windows. Hypocrisy at its finest.

The article ends with:

Hopefully, Google will wake up to a New Year with a resolution to change its ways and start to conform with the antitrust laws. If not, then 2013 hopefully will be the year when antitrust enforcers display the resolve that Google continues to lack.

    Looks like the war is not over yet and Mr Heiner would be very bad as a seer. Yesterday many Windows Phone 7 and 8 users have cut off entirely from Google Maps service. After trying to run it, they were redirected to the google.com. It's not a secret that IE was never officially supported by Google. It is because Google Maps relies on WebKit on mobile devices. The Internet Explorer app for Windows Phone can't handle the rendering engine. Nevertheless it was still accessible for W7/W8 users until yesterday.

   At least this is what Google tries to convince us to believe in. Microsoft is claiming that Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 use the same rendering engine. That would mean that Google is blocking Windows Phone users on purpose.

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  Beware, Android users! Dr. Web is reporting about a new Android trojan - Android.DDoS.1.origin. What is so interesting about this specific virus? It can turn your device into DDOS machine or send out text messages without your knowledge. Trojan pretends to be an original Google application. It uses the same icon as Google Play. After you start it, it opens google store and waits for orders send by SMS.

Image taken from Dr. Web site

   How harmful this trojan could be? It will definitely slow down your phone and make you pay for all those SMS it will send. What is worse it can force you to subscribe a service by sending premium SMS.

What is a the best defense from such threats? In most situations - common sense.

1. Never install applications from unknown sources
2. Use antivirus software like avast!. You can find more information about it on Pimp Your Droid. You can also find there reviews of games and apps for android users. Worth to check.

The post Dangerous Android Trojan has been found appeared first on Software In Action - News, reviews, tutorials, tips and tricks..

It's not a secret that storing and sharing photos and music are one of the most desirable features of social network sites and cloud storage services.

  Dropbox, one of the most popular companies offering services in the cloud, recently introduced the possibility of automatically uploading images directly from the camera to a cloud drive. Looks like Dropbox got some bigger plans with this kind of services, because they just bought a young company specialized in storing and sharing photos - Snapjoy. Snapjoy allowed (at the moment, creating a new account has been blocked) to gather photographs from external sites - Flickr, Instagram, Picasa but also from IPhone, Mac or PC in a one place - some kind of "smart" library. You could also use this devices to send out pictures - on Facebook, Twitter, or simply by sharing a link with your friends. You could also build a public gallery - all for free.

   It seems that Dropbox is starting to chase Google Drive and SkyDrive in a functionality of its service also when it comes to music files. Last week Dropbox took over Audiogalaxy. The service is no longer used to download illegal songs (as it used to be), but allows to stream songs in a similar way to Google Music and Pandora. Currently, you can't create a new account. In a next year currently provided services will be disabled.

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  The end of the year is coming very fast. It is a good time to sum up things. The Linux Foundation summarizes 12 months of it's activities. Can 2012 be called the year of Linux? I'm not sure about that, if you believe statistics gathered by the NetMarketShare (based on browser identifier), Linux is installed on more computers than Windows 8. It was certainly an interesting year for Linux anyway. The Foundation has prepared a brief summary of the main events.

  Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, has been awarded the half of this year's Millennium Technology Prize- award given every two years for achievements in technology, which have a positive impact on quality of life. The other half has been given to a Japanese physician, Shinya Yamanaka, who also won the Nobel Prize for his study of stem cells this year. It is also worth to mention a Linus gesture directed at NVIDIA, which maybe had some impact on the companies decision to support Optimus technology in Linux.

  This year Linux-based products again attracted wide public interest. Android overtook iOS on smartphones market in the last quarter of 2010, since then it was just better. Observers keep an eye on the Sailfish and Firefox OS. Linux appeared on the Kindle Fire, Chromebooks, and even cars - Cadillac CUE or work-in-progress Toyota models. In 2012, the Foundation has gained a prominent new members including Samsung, NVIDIA, HP and Twitter.

   It was also loud about Raspberry Pi - a tiny computer that costs a little more than 30$, on which it is possible to install Raspbiana - a modified version of Debian. The possibility of uses are limited only by imagination of the owner. The platform recently got its own app store.

   The second project, which made Linux the center of attention, is of course the Steam client and the development of games for the platform. Valve Source and THQ already announced their participation.

  How many users Linux have? Well in the era of ubiquitous Internet, almost everyone who connects to the Network uses Linux uses linux in some way. Under the control of this system works 94% of the 500 fastest superservers in the world plus a lot of devices that are part of the infrastructure (even our home routers). I think the best summary would be the video itself, where Linux Fundation sums up 2012:

The post The Linux Foundation sums up 2012 in a video appeared first on Software In Action - News, reviews, tutorials, tips and tricks..

   Instagram is going to do quite disturbing changes in the terms of use policy. Don't be surprised if you find your photo, originally published on Instagram, on any other website. Let me quote official information from their blog:

 

Nothing has changed about your photos’ ownership or who can see them.

Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups. This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.

Our updated terms of service help protect you, and prevent spam and abuse as we grow.

   The new rules come into life on January 16, and if someone does not agree with them, he should delete the account until that day. The new rules allows Instagram to function better as part of Facebook, and to help to protect users from spam, but it is only part of the story. The problem is, that potential advertisers will be able to pay Instagram for the possibility to display images with metadata, user name, his avatar and use them in promotional materials. Let's take a closer look at new TOS, the Proprietary Rights in Content on Instagram section:

 …By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except content not shared publicly (“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

Some of the Instagram Services are supported by advertising revenue and may display advertisements and promotions, and you hereby agree that Instagram may place such advertising and promotions on the Instagram Services or on, about, or in conjunction with your content. The manner, mode and extent of such advertising and promotions are subject to change without specific notice to you.

    Photographer (even 13-year-old, because people in this age group can make an account) will not be even notified, when his photo will be sold to some other company.

   If you don't like these new changes, and I expect that most users are not happy with them, you should delete your account before January 16.

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