Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Ouch! It is getting really, really nasty out there! This is why you should practice “safe computing!”

CryptoLocker Ransomeware demands $300 to decrypt your files

From “The Hacker News” – “If you’re a daily computer user, you’re likely aware of all the threats you face every day online in the form of viruses and malware.

CryptoLocker, a new ransomware malware, began making the rounds several months ago. This ransomware is particularly nasty because infected users are in danger of losing their personal files forever.

Ransomware is designed to extort money from computer users by holding computer files hostage until the computer user pays a ransom fee to get them back. The Cryptolocker hijacker sniffs out your personal files and wraps them with strong encryption before it demands money.

Cryptolocker is spread through malicious hyperlinks shared via social media and spam emails, like fake UPS tracking notification emails. The original demanded payments of $100 to decrypt files, but the new and improved version demanding $300 from victims.

Apparently, the encryption is created using a unique RSA-2048 public key. The decryption key is located on a secret server somewhere on the Internet and then there is a countdown on the infected machine which will let you know how long you have until this key will no longer be available.

Ransomware is not a new threat, but in the last year, it has become more effective and more popular with criminals. Researchers from a number of antivirus vendors are working on a way to undo the damage, but it’s not going to be easy.

To prevent Ransomware from infecting your computer, please ensure that your computer has a properly configured firewall, updating each computer on a regular basis with the latest patches and updates from their vendor such as Microsoft, and restricting access solely to the administrator or person who operates the network or computer.”

We all know that it is a fact that Internet Explorer is sorry, and it’s mother dresses it funny. It is the most insecure browser on the Internet, and should never be used. HOWEVER, you should still patch this latest exploit with the fix, because it is even worse than the normal IE insecurities. Ouch. Yes, Microsoft is lame… again.

Microsoft issues patch to fix Internet Explorer security gap

“Microsoft has released an emergency software fix for Internet Explorer after hackers exploited a security flaw in the browser to attack an unknown number of users.

Named Fix It, the software patch is Microsoft’s response to learning about ‘extremely limited, targeted attacks’ that made use of the newly discovered bug.

The announcement comes hours after the company has initiated a massive share buyback worth $40bn believed to raise its dividend pay-out to shareholders by 22 per cent.

According to Microsoft’s statement, hackers took advantage of a previously unknown bug to conduct a series of zero-day attacks – those occurring immediately after the discovery, giving software developers no time to address the issue.

Experts believe state-sponsored hacking groups frequently pay thousands of dollars to find and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities in widespread software, such as the Internet Explorer.

To keep the gap secret as long as possible, only a very small number of carefully selected, high-value targets, is attacked initially.

After a warning about a zero-day bug is officially issued, hacking groups will embark on an engineering operation to build computer viruses based on Fix It’s architecture, trying to exploit the same gaps for massive cyber-crime operations, such as identity theft.

Security experts have advised users to either immediately install Fix it or switch to another browser until a regular software update addressing the shortcoming is made available.

‘With the Fix It out, I’m sure any attacker who is a bit sophisticated can figure out what the flaw is and implement a similar exploit in their own attack toolkit,’ said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at the cyber-security firm Qualys.

Unlike a conventional update, which is installed automatically, Fix It type of software needs to be downloaded and installed by the user on his/hers PC.

Experts believe Microsoft will try to make a proper update ready in two or three weeks. Until then, users can find and install Fix It from Microsoft’s support site.”

Wow! This is just too cool! Maybe we will end up with a real, live superhero!

US Army plans ‘Iron Man’ armor for soldiers

BBC News – The US Army is working to develop ‘revolutionary’ smart armor that would give its troops ‘superhuman strength’.

It is calling on the technology industry, government labs and academia to help build the Iron Man-style suit.

Other exoskeletons that allow soldiers to carry large loads much further have already been tested by the army.

The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (Talos) would have such a frame but would also have layers of smart materials fitted with sensors.

The suit would also need to have wide-area networking and a wearable computer similar to Google Glass, the US Army said.

Increase strength

It should be made of smart material fitted with sensors to monitor body temperature, heart rate and hydration levels.

The exoskeleton, which could be attached to arms and legs, would be likely to use hydraulics to greatly increase strength.

‘The requirement is a comprehensive family of systems in a combat armor suit where we bring together an exoskeleton with innovative armor, displays for power monitoring, health monitoring, and integrating a weapon into that,’ said Lt Col Karl Borjes, a science adviser at the US Army’s research, development and engineering command.

‘It’s advanced armor. It’s communications, antennas. It’s cognitive performance. It’s sensors, miniature-type circuits. That’s all going to fit in here, too,’ he added.

Magnetic field

According to US Army Sgt Maj Chris Faris, ‘no one industry can build it’.

Instead the army is calling on research and development organisations, private industry as well as government labs and academia to support the project.

The US Army said it was likely that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would be involved in the design.

An MIT team is currently developing liquid body armor – made from fluids that transform into a solid when a magnetic field or electrical current is applied.

Large robot

In an interview with US news site NPR, MIT professor Gareth McKinley compared the futuristic armor to that seen in Hollywood films.

‘It sounds exactly like Iron Man,’ he said.

‘The other kind of things that you see in the movies… would be the kind of external suit that Sigourney Weaver wears in Aliens, where it’s a large robot that amplifies the motions and lifting capability of a human.’

The aim is the get the Talos armor out in the field within three years.

An Open Source Robotic Operating System. How cool is that?!

Open-source Robot Operating System

Wired – The coding world is getting weirder. You’d think that a guy who aspires to be the artisan maestro of world robotic operating systems would have some kind of real job and an official title, but not only does he not have one, he doesn’t much seem to need one.

‘The masterstroke in Quigley’s design is not strictly technical but social.’ Actually, it’s strictly technically social, because if you strip the support hardware and social-code out of the ROS scene and try to write it all down with a paper and pencil, there’s nothing there; it’d be like Facebook done as a college yearbook.

Three decades ago, the availability of many versions of DOS helped spark the boom in personal computers. Today, Robot Operating System, or ROS, is poised to do the same for robots. Morgan Quigley programmed the first iteration of what grew into ROS as a graduate student in 2006, and today his open-source code is redefining the practical limits of robotics. Since version 1.0 was released in 2010, ROS has become the de facto standard in robotics software.

‘To visit Quigley’s office at the Open Source Robotics Foundation in Mountain View, California, the organization he cofounded last summer to steward ROS, is to step into a future of robotics where hardware is cheap, and it’s quick and easy to snap together preëxisting pieces to create new machines. Quigley’s workspace is littered with dozens of mechanical fingers—modules that form a robotic hand. “The hands themselves can talk ROS,’ Quigley says. His T-shirt is emblazoned with a programming joke: shirtcount++;.

(((Tangentially — ever since I started blogging about robots on the site here, you should see how my advertising pop-ups have changed. I don’t know which surveillance-marketer is on my case, but they’ve got me staked-out demographically as some kind of Quigley-in-waiting; I’m getting pitches for Arduinos, Leap Motions, even hardware I’ve never heard of, and I thought I’d heard of plenty.)))

Unlike more conventional robotic technology, Quigley’s four-fingered hand is not controlled by a central processor. Its fingers and palm distribute computing chores among 14 low-cost, low-power processors dedicated to controlling each joint directly. That greatly simplifies the internal communication and coördination (((<— TECHNOLOGY REVIEW has automatic umlauts in their website code, that’s pretty impressive))) required to execute a task such as picking up a pencil. Both the software and electronics are open source. Any robot builder can take Quigley’s design and use or improve upon it.

Ultimately, Quigley hopes, these innovations will lead to more agile, more capable robots that can perform a variety of jobs and don’t cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And no longer will engineers have to start from scratch to design the functions that go into a robot—they’ll have an open-source base of code and hardware. Already, engineers using ROS are working on robots that do everything from folding laundry to repetitive operations in advanced manufacturing. ‘It will allow applications we couldn’t dream of before,’ Quigley says….”

Windows XP was a good OS, but it’s time has come! We need to be getting off of it, and on to, at least, Windows 7, assuming you stick with Windows. You COULD go to Linux. Just sayin’.

How businesses can cope with the looming Windows XP deadline

ZDnet – “You hear that ticking sound? The one that got noticeably louder this week?

That’s the sound of the alarm clock set to go off on April 8, 2014. On that date, Microsoft will release its last security updates for Windows XP, whose extended support period will come to a hard stop. That end date is now less than six months away, which means you really should stop procrastinating and start planning on how you’re going to avoid being part of a relatively small population that will be targeted by every piece of villainous scum in the universe.

Exactly how many PCs will still be out there running Windows XP next April? Good luck with that forecast. It’s hard enough to get current estimates, with the two most popular sources estimating that XP-powered machines constitute between 20.5 percent (StatCounter) and 31.42 percent (NetMarketShare) of the installed base of PCs and Macs worldwide.

If we assume that 1-2 percent of those machines upgrade or die each month for the next six months, that still leaves more than 100 million PCs still running Windows XP when security updates stop next April. Will you be one of them? And if so, why?

Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone deliberately choosing to continue using an outdated and increasingly insecure operating system when other options are readily available. But I can understand people who feel forced to remain on a platform for compatibility’s sake.

Businesses of every size that are wrestling with the how-to-upgrade-from-XP question can be blocked from migrating for a variety of reasons. (I discussed the topic at length with Dell’s Margaret Walsh in a recent Google+ hangout that’s now available for replay.)

If the hardware is of relatively recent vintage (any system older than five years has probably outlived its usefulness), you can upgrade to a supported version of Windows—ideally Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. For desktop PCs, some hardware upgrades might be required, but that’s still less than the cost of a new PC.

If your budget is so tight that the cost of an OS upgrade is too much to bear, now might be the time to consider switching to a free alternative like Linux, along with open-source apps and free or low-cost services to complement them.

For most mobile devices and older desktops, though, a replacement PC is usually a smarter investment than a potentially expensive combination of hardware and software upgrades plus the cost of the labor to install them. New hardware is also generally easier and cheaper to manage, maintain, and secure than older PCs, which are more likely to break and where replacement parts can be hard to find and expensive.

But what if you don’t have the luxury of switching? Here are three strategies to adopt if you can’t cut your XP ties right away.

Pull the (network) plug

One reader told me last week that switching away from Windows XP wasn’t an option for him because of some custom audio mixing software he uses. There’s no upgrade option available, there’s no acceptable alternative program, and the software needs direct access to audio hardware, so it won’t run in a virtual machine. In the past, I’ve heard similar stories from people using peripherals like scanners and custom printers that require device drivers only available for Windows XP.

If there’s truly no possibility of upgrading or replacing that must-have program or device, then the best solution is to move that PC off the network, out of harm’s way. Disconnect its Internet connection so you (and others) cannot use it for email or web browsing and thus can’t expose yourself to potentially malicious software or network intrusion attempts.

You can use removable media (carefully) to copy files between this isolated XP PC and other machines that have full Internet access. But if you’re really keeping that XP box around just for one purpose, let it be dedicated to that purpose.

Virtualize the problem apps

Some older apps simply don’t work on Windows 7, and in extreme cases incompatible apps are blocked from installation completely. For off-the-shelf applications, there’s usually an upgrade available, or a suitable replacement program.

A much worse problem, especially in enterprise settings, is with custom line-of-business apps that would cost a fortune to update—or, worse, can’t be updated because the program’s author is long gone and no one has the slightest idea how it works.

If the OS version is the only roadblock, you should be able to solve the compatibility conundrum by running the problem app in a well-sandboxed virtual machine (VM). Windows 8.x Pro and Enterprise have Hyper-V virtualization built in. Windows 7 Pro includes Windows XP Mode and Virtual PC, which has the advantage of eliminating the cost of an XP license for your VM. You can use VMware or Virtual Box on Windows 7 or, for that matter, on a PC running Linux.

With your virtualization software Set up a VM running Windows XP, lock it down firmly so it can’t be used for web browsing or email, and then install your XP-only app. You can use the physical machine, with its modern, fully patched operating system, for everyday tasks and use the VM exclusively for that one app.

On enterprise networks, you can use application virtualization or session virtualization to package older apps and allow them to run in an isolated environment on client PCs, using Microsoft’s App-V, Citrix’s XenApp, or other similar solutions.

Ask for help

If your organization is large enough, you can call on outside resources for assistance with app compatibility testing, app management, and deployment. And instead of thinking of this as a one-time chore designed to fix a single problem, think of it as an opportunity to prepare IT systems for the future.

Compatibility testing is a huge issue for organizations, Jefferson Raley of Dell’s Strategic Consulting Practice told me last week. On average, he said, large organizations have about 700 apps installed for every 10,000 users. Very large enterprises might have 10,000 installed apps and several thousand more Web-based apps. To assist organizations that are stuck on an XP treadmill, Dell has set up a new Windows Migration Fast Forward service, which can transition up to 5000 PCs in five sites in 16 weeks.

‘We can get you to the April deadline,’ said Raley, ‘but let’s clean up your environment at the same time.’ By doing a comprehensive range of compatibility testing and setting up automated deployment and management tools, those outside consultants can process up to 500 apps a week, deciding which ones should enter the new environment as is, which ones can be virtualized, and which ones should be retired. The key is making sure that the infrastructure you build today will help you not just with this migration but with the next one, and the one after that.

The clock is ticking.”

Google has announced a new, cool looking entry into the Google Chromebook world!

Google announces HP Chromebook 11 for $279, we go hands-on

Engadget – “A few days ago, a leak tipped us off to an unannounced HP Chromebook 11, and today Google made that piece of hardware official. Priced at $279, this 11-incher is available today, and we’ve already had a chance to get our hands on the unit — in several of its punchy color options, to boot.

The laptop is sleek and attractive, especially considering the ultra-accessible price. At 2.3 pounds (1.04kg), the machine feels ridiculously light in the hand, though the magnesium frame also lends some sturdiness. HP’s notebook, we must say, really reminds us of Apple’s white MacBook from several years back thanks to the softly rounded edges and the white glossy finish,

The design is completely screw-free, leaving the lid and back bare. Incidentally, the machine is also void of vents or fans — with the Sasmung Exynos 5250 processor under the hood, hopefully things won’t get too toasty. That processing unit is accompanied by 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB SSD is the sole storage option. As for WiFi, we’re looking at dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n (with Bluetooth 4.0) though a rep said a 4G option will be available as well.”