Tech Tuesday #24: Bleep Bloop
Morning, or evening for those that are either on the other side of the world or those who are nocturnal like myself. Another week, another random title, and one anniversary down for John and Desirai. For anyone living near the Joplin and Springfield area in Southwest Missouri, keep your ears open for any word on if my plans to host a video game tournament end up happening. I’m currently getting this organized and making the phone calls, but no word on a date yet. I’ll be sure to post the information to the site in a news post once I have things finalized.
Let’s see if I can discuss this little tidbit without turning into a complete Linux fanboy in the process. Microsoft’s Head of Security for their UK division has stated that switching your browser from Internet Explorer to…any other browser will open you up to much more severe security risks. Now, without going back and listing off some security holes that have been in IE6, but I will give a link. This statement from the Head of Security comes after the admittance by MS that an IE flaw was used to attack Google and gain access to users accounts. They even admitted that it was unlikely Firefox or any other browser was affected by this exploit. The whole situation is a huge PR disaster for Microsoft, and I look forward to seeing if they will release an awkward video ad to promote IE now.
AT&T has fixed a bug with their handling of Facebook Mobile that caused users to log into the wrong account. Yes, I mean actually logging into some random person’s Facebook on your phone and being able to pose as them. Fortunately it seemed to have been only in a few isolated incidents, and unfortunately no hilarious stories could be found involving this security blunder. AT&T has put a new layer of security into the login process and have been working with Facebook to be certain the issue wont pop up randomly in the future. Rest easy Facebook users, but don’t click on that weird looking link like you want to.
Keeping with today’s trend of exploits and bugs in software. If you run a D-Link router or you know someone that does, you might want to pay attention. There was a fairly significant hole in the security of current D-Link firmware that was recently brought to light. The bug was in how D-Link implemented Cisco’s Home Network Administration Protocol for router configuration. If you own a D-Link router that matches one of these three model numbers: DIR-855 (hardware version A2), DIR-655 (versions A1 to A4), and DIR-635 (version B). Go upgrade immediately.
Time has come again for me to wrap this up, and yes today the title does tie into a video. Today’s video was discovered during my browsing of headlines on 1up. I know some of you will really enjoy this, particularly those that hunt after something with a passion on certain video games. Enjoy everyone, I’ll see you next week…or sooner if I can get the logistics of my tournament settled.
