Monster infected by personal data Trojan?

Following on from recent personal information warnings issued to Web 2.0 community users on such sites as Facebook and MySpace, it would appear that online ID criminals are now widening their nefarious net trawling through to recruitment services.

Specifically, news is spreading across the Net outlining that popular recruitment sites are being successfully attacked by a new Trojan virus that has gained access to the personal information of hundreds of thousands of registered users.

Online security experts emanating from both SecureWorks and Symantec have revealed the new Infostealer.Monstres virus after it was discovered trying to gain illicit entry to the official Web site for recruitment specialist Monster.com. Researchers from both security services have labelled the Prg Trojan variant as being unusually efficient and an extremely effective threat.

According to researchers at Symantec, the Infostealer.Monstres Trojan has gathered as many as 1.6 million pieces of personal data covering several hundred thousand members of Monster.com’s user base – and that’s not taking into account other affected online recruitment services. Once extracted, the user data is then uploaded to a remote server location.

Regarding the attack on Monster.com, California-based Symantec Corporation has offered that the Trojan is utilising the “probably stolen” credentials of many recruitment agencies in order to access Monster.com and carry out specific resume searches across its wealth of job candidates.

“The Trojan sends HTTP commands to the Monster.com Website to navigate to the Managed Folders section,” explained Symantec through its official blog. “It then parses the output from a pop-up window containing the profiles of the candidates that match this recruiter’s saved searches.”

Monster.com has now been made aware of the vulnerable exploits following Symantec’s discovery of the 1.6 million pieces of stolen data, which were all collected together on a single server. It is likely that Monster will invariably close down the recruiter accounts of all those affected. Further to that, Symantec has advised that, until a prospective employer has been established as being above board, users should refrain from posting sensitive personal information to their job postings.

A related Forbes article outlines that Monster.com and its security partner Cyveillance issued a warning to the industry in July that revealed a rise in recruitment site attacks. Infostealer.Monstres, which is generally delivered via phishing mails, is one such criminally engineered Trojan that Monster and Cyveillance covered in their warning.

Blu-ray camp fires back at latest HD DVD announcements

Ah, the emails and voice mails were flying fast and furious yesterday after Paramount and DreamWorks made their little announcement about going HD DVD exclusive. At just after 4 p.m. in New York, Fox and MGM put out a press release saying they were unveiling “an aggressive global Blu-ray Disc release strategy, including 29 new release and ‘must-have’ catalog titles that runs through the end of the 2007 calendar year.”

The release went on to say that Fox intends to release “at least one state-of-the-art title per month featuring numerous BD ‘firsts’” and highlighted the fact that “Blu-ray was out-performing HD DVD 2-to-1 at retail in 2007.” Among the 29 new releases, my eye was drawn to Master & Commander, Ronin, Cast Away, Independence Day, A Bridge Too Far, 28 Days Later, The Day After Tomorrow, and the Die Hard trilogy.

After the email went out, the phone started ringing: All the CNET the home-theater editors were contacted, so the PR folks at GCI Group in LA were working overtime, trying to do a little damage control. The basic message was, they may have this, but we have a whole more of that. And, did you hear that the Paramount deal doesn’t include any of Speilberg’s movies and that the deal only ran for 18 months. Tit for tat. Tat for tit. The war was raging.

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Firefox Campus Edition Launches

A rep for Firefox’s PR firm let us know that Firefox is set to launch Firefox Campus Edition later today. It’s essentially Firefox with a “back to school bundle” of add-ons:

Zotero – plugin for research and notetaking
StumbleUpon – the popular bookmarking tool.
Foxytunes – Control iTunes from the browser. Not sure about the educational benefits here.

It’s probably fair to say this is a marketing drive to get Firefox installed on student laptops before they head back to school. I can think of a few companies, however, who might have extensions more suited to productivity, and might be feeling a little left out of this particular bundle.

Once launched, the new version will be available at firefox.com/backtoschool.

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Zoho gears up with Google to go offline

SaaS office productivity provider Zoho is about to make its online word processor Zoho Writer available offline with the help of Google. The result could offer a glimpse into the not too distant future of all office applications.

One of the criticisms of online office productivity tools such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Zoho Writer and others is that without an Internet connection they’re not accessible. On the other hand, online versions of applications such as word processors, spreadsheets and presentation software free users from the constraints of specific computers and enable a degree of collaboration not possible with offline software.

Google is working to solve this problem using a beta application called Google Gears which enables online software services to be accessed offline by recreating the online software and data in an offline cache which is synchronized with the online version when the user connects to the Internet.

Blu-ray versus HD-DVD

Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD use the same kind of 405 nanometer wavelength blue-violet laser. That means both can focus more sharply than the 650 nanometer red lasers used in current DVD players, and so both can store much more information on the same surface area of a disc.

But there are important differences between them.

Blu-ray packs data into a tighter single spiral on the surface of a disc than HD-DVD. That means a single disk can carry more digital “pits” – the tiny zeroes and ones that are translated into audio and digital content when a disc is played.

That means that a Blu-ray discs can carry more information “per layer” (or, if you like, “spiral”). But it also makes the two formats incompatible.

A standard double-layer DVD has 9 gigabytes (GB) capacity. HD-DVD is capable of holding 30GB of data – or a full-length high-definition movie, plus extras – on a double-layer disc, but Blu-ray launched with 50GB capacity.

It means that the two competing systems must use a different coating on their discs – HD-DVD uses a surface layer that is 0.6mm thick. Blu-ray’s is much thinner at 0.1mm.

This is the root of what makes Blu-ray more expensive to produce – the thinner surface means standard DVD plants need to be re-tooled. A special hard coating must also be added to protect the information stored on a disc’s surface.

Blu-ray is the more sophisticated format – and is being hailed as a “leapfrog” technology. That advance comes at a price, however.

The theory is borne out by a (very) quick search on the internet to compare prices of HD DVD players and their Blu-ray peers.

The cheapest Blu-ray player weighs in at about £450 (£399 if you count Sony’s PlayStation 3 console, which comes with Blu-ray on board). The cheapest HD-DVD player costs about £220 (or £110, if you count the add-on HD-DVD player for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 games console – though to use it, you must already have bought an Xbox 360, which now retails from about £180).

If you are willing to take the plunge and invest in a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player despite the current uncertainty over which will last the course, remember that though both will work with most new TVs, you will need a high definition TV with 1080 screen resolution to get the most from your player.

Most HD-DVD and Blu-ray players will play standard DVDs.

Xbox 360™ Elite – Full Details

Xbox 360™ Elite : All India Launch : mstpblog Exclusive

• Introducing Xbox 360™ Elite, the premier Xbox 360 console package that includes a massive 120GB hard drive, a HDMI port, and HDMI cable, all wrapped up with a premium black finish. Xbox 360 Elite also includes a black wireless controller and black Xbox LIVE® headset.
• Xbox 360 Elite has enough space for a whole library of Xbox LIVE Arcade games as well as downloadable high-definition TV shows, movies, music, and all the other content available from Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

Elite Console box contains

Xbox 360 Elite console:

• The console is equipped with an HDMI port, HDMI cable, a black wireless controller and black Xbox LIVE® headset.
• It also comes with three powerful core processors, 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, anti-aliasing for smooth textures, full surround sound, and DVD playback with upscaling capabilities right out of the box.

Xbox 360 120GB hard drive:

• The huge 120GB detachable hard drive allows gamers to save their games and store television shows, movies, music, pictures, trailers, extra game levels, demos and other content available from Xbox LIVE® Marketplace.
• Watch your favorite DVD movies in standard or HD DVD. Download movies, Connect an MP3 player, Connect to a digital camera and view your pictures, Voice chat with friends and family over Xbox LIVE® , Connect to Windows XP or Windows Media Center Based PC.

Xbox 360 Wireless Controller (black):

• The sleek black finish of this high-performance wireless controller matches the style of the Elite Console.
• It has a range of up to 30 feet and a battery life of 30 hours on two AA batteries.

Xbox 360 headset (black):

• Now available in black, the headset lets you strategize while playing together online or trade taunts with your opponents.
• You can also send voice messages to friends on Xbox LIVE® .

Xbox 360 HDMI cable:

• New to Xbox 360, HDMI lets you get HD video (up to 1080p) and multichannel surround sound, all from one cable.

Wal-Mart Begins Selling Music in MP3

Wal-Mart said Tuesday it will begin offering MP3 tracks from its music download service through arrangements with labels EMI and Universal.

Tracks will be priced at 94 cents and albums at $9.22 USD. Artists at launch include The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, and Maroon 5, among others.

As a promotion, certain classic albums will be offered at a discounted price, including Slippery When Wet by Bon Jovi and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ by 50 Cent at $5.88 per album, and Come Away With Me by Norah Jones, Be Here by Keith Urban and Barrio Fino en Directo by Daddy Yankee at $7.88 per album.

The move makes Wal-Mart’s online music store one of the first major retailers to offer MP3 tracks.

Apple iPhone Review – iPod

I’ve owned at least one of every kind of iPod ever made and as I’ve watched Apple steadily improve the product line and drop prices, the iPod has become the gotta-have-it gadget of the early 21st century. These days, it seems, everyone has an iPod, sometimes more than one, and Apple has responded to the maturing market by expanding the product line with new models that meet different needs and by lowering prices.

After plying consumers with three evolutionary models of the original iPod, Apple expanded the line first with the lackluster (and initially impossible to find) iPod mini and then later with the stellar iPod nano and iPod shuffle. Though the iPhone does so much more than any iPod, one might consider this device the next generation iPod, thanks to its new form factor, gorgeous new graphical views, compatibility with the hardware’s finger-based scrolling, and more. No, it’s not perfect–the iPhone also drops some key iPod functionality too–but wow. It sure is an awesome iPod.

The iPhone’s iPod functionality is handled through a software application named, get this, iPod. The iPod application is important enough to warrant one of just four available spots at the bottom of the iPhone home screen, alongside Phone, Mail, and Safari, and Apple lists iPod as one of the four core areas of iPhone functionality. This makes sense: Apple’s sold a gajillion iPods, and its experience designing, improving, and marketing the iPod is all over the iPhone. Spiritually, if not technologically, the iPhone really is an iPod.

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HP Tests Mobile Printing Service

Hewlett-Packard is testing an innovative, new Web-based service that will allow mobile users to print documents virtually anywhere.

Currently in beta, Cloudprint is a free service aimed at “anyone who needs to share, store and print their documents using a cell phone at any time no matter where they are,” according to HP spokesperson Christina Schneider.

To use the service, users must install a virtual print driver on their PC, which adds a Cloudprint printer option. Users enter a cell phone number and print to a “virtual printer,” which uploads the document to HP-hosted servers. A six-digit document code is assigned by HP and sent to the mobile device via SMS. Cloudprint users can then access the document or share it with other users by distributing the document code. The service is currently Windows-only. A Macintosh version is in the works, officials said.

Embed Google Maps with HTML

Google Maps took another step forward as the defacto online map today by releasing the ability to embed Google Maps into web pages as simply and easily as cutting and pasting some HTML.

Until today you needed to apply for an API key and put together a map using JavaScript to display a Google Map on your web site (or blog post). Now, clicking ‘link to this page’ at Google Maps gives you the HTML you need, to embed the current map as an iframe in your web page.

The embedded maps are fully interactive Google Maps, and include whatever the original Maps page displayed — including business and address search results, driving directions, and (impressively) saved My Maps.

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