Free Republic

The interesting part is the lower right hand of the pictorial.

Adobe Systems has released a patch for 22 vulnerabilities in Flash Player, one of which is reportedly under attack by an exploit that exists in the wild. The most critical vulnerability, CVE-2015-3043, could lead to code execution. Adobe's Flash Player security updates are available for Macintosh, Windows and Linux."Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2015-3043 exists in the wild, and recommends users update their product installations," said Adobe. If you reached this page because you're unsure if a popup alert from Adobe is real, take a look at our helpful guide for best practices how to safely install and...

Software security group Kaspesky labs in collaboration with the Dutch police has released a tool which helps to decrypt files locked by Ransomware. Kaspersky Labs has released a decryption tool for files encrypted with CoinVault ransomware. The tool was developed by the Kaspersky lab after the The National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) of the Dutch police handed over the information obtained from a database of CoinVault command-and-control server containing the decryption keys.

More than 300 Chicago-area jobs will be lost when electronics retailer TigerDirect closes all but three of its 34 stores, including four Chicago-area locations and a distribution center. About 40 employees at each location will be cut, a spokeswoman said. Stores in Orland Park, Hoffman Estates, Naperville and Vernon Hills are among those closing. According to the latest Illinois Warn report, layoffs will occur at the retail locations May 9. A distribution center adjacent to the Naperville store will also be shuttered, with 172 workers scheduled to be laid off June 8.

Washington (CNN)—Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion. The hackers had access to sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president's schedule. While such information is not classified, it is still highly sensitive and prized by foreign intelligence agencies, U.S. officials say. The White House in October said it...

CNN has made news with this headline: “How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House.” Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion. The hackers had access to sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president’s schedule. While such information is not classified, it is still highly sensitive and...

Version 4.0.0 of Mono, the FOSS implementation of the .NET Framework, has been released. This is the first release of Mono that replaces various components of Mono with code that was released by Microsoft under the MIT license. Microsoft itself is working towards .NET Core: a redistributable and re-imagined version of .NET, which has two code drops: CoreFX and CoreCLR. Mono at this point continues to provide an API that tracks the .NET desktop/server version. This means that most of the Mono code that has been integrated from Microsoft comes from the ReferenceSource code drop. ...

Is Malwarebytes and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploits two separate programs? If so, is it advised to have both programs on my computer? I am currently using Malwarebytes Anti-malware on my Windows 8.1 system.

It’s a commonly held belief among software developers that avoiding disk access in favor of doing as much work as possible in-memory will results in shorter runtimes. The growth of big data has made time saving techniques such as performing operations in-memory more attractive than ever for programmers. New research, though, challenges the notion that in-memory operations are always faster than disk-access approaches and reinforces the need for developers to better understand system-level software. These findings were recently presented by researchers from the University of Calgary and the University of British Columbia in a paper titled When In-Memory Computing is...

SSL/TLS encryption once again is being haunted by an outdated and weak feature long past its prime:  a newly discovered attack exploits a weakness in the older, less secure RC4 encryption algorithm option in SSL/TLS that's still supported in many browsers and servers. Itsik Mantin, director of security research with Imperva, at Black Hat Asia in Singapore today will detail how an attacker could sniff credentials and other information during an SSL session in an attack he named the "Bar Mitzvah Attack" after 13-year-old weaknesses in the algorithm it abuses. The attack is a glaring reminder that the RC4 algorithm,...

Ben Gurion University reported Monday that researcher Mordechai Guri, assisted by Matan Munitz and guided by Prof. Yuval Elovici, uncovered a way to breach air-gapped systems—that's quite something considering that air-gapped systems, said the Daily Mail, are among the most secure computers on the planet, used in high security settings such as classified military networks, payment networks processing credit and debit card transactions for retailers, and industrial control systems for critical infrastructure. The research initiative was given the name BitWhisper, part of research on the topic of air-gap security at the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University. Dudu Mimran,...

Remember the most talked about story of 2014? It was Microsoft loves Linux. It looks like Microsoft’s love for Linux is more like Mark Wahlberg’s love for Reese Witherspoon as we saw in the movie Fear.If reports are to be trusted Microsoft’s survival mechanism may kick in again, with the new release of Windows. The legacy software maker may resort to ‘secure boot’ to block alternative operating systems on Windows PCs.At Microsoft’s hardware conference WinHEC, new slides were shown which could mean bad news for Linux users. Machines shipping with Windows 10 may see OEMs enforcing Secure Boot without an option...

Last week I had a very wierd computer glitch. It screwed up my text fonts, desktop icons and other stuff. At any rate I have gotten things mostly back under control, except for one thing. Java scripts refuse to run in Firefox. I have updated Firefox, I have update Java, I have gone through everywhere I can think of to enable Java script, but it still will not run. Does anyone have any suggestians on how to fix this or what the problem might be? It has me flummoxed. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

There’s one thing you may have begun to notice about digital design and 3D printing: whatever you think might happen in the future is probably going to advance far beyond whatever you envisioned or thought might be a cool idea. And literally, one day you may be envisioning your entire world, and recording it as well, through completely artificially constructed, 3D printed eyeballs. You may be able to say goodbye to prescription glasses and contact lenses — and even your camera, as your original retina is replaced by a new and digital network contained inside your head, and even able...

Ask security experts what to do when hit with ransomware – the sophisticated malware that infects a device or network, uses military-grade encryption to restrict access, and demands payment for the decryption key – and you'll typically get the same answer: "never pay the ransom." But for many, that's simply not an option. For example, last November an employee in the Sheriff's Department in Dickinson County, Tenn., accidentally clicked on a malicious ad and exposed the office network to the infamous CryptoWall ransomware. Detective Jeff McCliss told local News Channel 5 that CryptoWall had encrypted "every sort of document you...

Ethereum, the brainchild of wunderkind software developer Vitalik Buterin, who was just 19 when he came up with the idea, is the most buzzed-about project right now in the cryptocurrency community. It has attracted an all-star team of computer scientists and raised $18.4 million in a crowdfunding campaign—the third most successful of all time. And now, according to the official Ethereum blog, it's on the verge of being rolled out to the public. Ethereum's developers use a rolling ticker tape of bold tag lines to describe what they're creating, including a “Social Operating System for Planet Earth,” and “the Upcoming...

For those of you who remember such classic computer games such as Descent (a Doom-type First Person Shooter) and Descent II, ars technica has an article posted about how some alums of the game are attempting a reboot of the game for PC/MAC called "Descent Underground". Another source states that a Linux version is planned but no reference is found in this article. More info, history, and some nice graphics are at the website.

My computer shuts down completely upon watching certain video. For example, the earlier posted Tom Cotton speech. When I clicked onto it, I was able to watch essentially the introduction, then, BLANK. The thing just shuts off. FR, or stuff like my library account, or the weather forecasts, etc, are fine. But the minute I switch to a video format, or try to watch a CD...blank. It suddenly shuts down completely. Is it my system, or is there a fix that I'm unaware of? I know there are many knowledgeable herein. Thank you all in advance.

The end is finally in sight for Microsoft’s long-fraught Internet Explorer. At the Microsoft Convergence conference yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s head of marketing, said that the new flagship browser for Windows, which was announced in January and is codenamed Project Spartan, will not be associated with the Internet Explorer brand. While Internet Explorer will still exist on Windows 10 for compatibility purposes, it will take a back seat to the new browser.

A judicial advisory panel Monday quietly approved a rule change that will broaden the FBI's hacking authority despite fears raised by Google that the amended language represents a "monumental" constitutional concern. The Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules voted 11-1 to modify an arcane federal rule to allow judges more flexibility in how they approve search warrants for electronic data, according to a Justice Department spokesman. Known as Rule 41, the existing provision generally allows judges to approve search warrants only for material within the geographic bounds of their judicial district. But the rule change, as requested by the...