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Stay anonymous online with SecurityKiss

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 10:29pm CEST par Mike Williams

If you feel you’d like to be a little more anonymous online then installing a free VPN client is generally a good place to start. But there’s a snag: even though the VPN service know you’re concerned about your internet privacy, they’ll often still ask you to create an account, provide your email address and maybe other details, too.

SecurityKISS takes a simpler approach. There’s no “signing up”, no forms to fill in, no personal information required at all: just download and install the OpenVPN-based client and you’re ready to go.

Another convenient plus point comes in the ability to choose your server location. When we clicked the Change Server button we could select IP addresses in France, the UK or US, very handy when you’re looking to bypass annoying location restrictions on the web.

SecurityKISS is also simple to use: just click Connect and you’ll be protected in seconds. The free client gives you 300MB traffic every day, adequate for our online essentials. And while browsing performance is obviously reduced, it was still perfectly acceptable in our tests.

Of course there are also significant restrictions with the free service, the most severe of which is the extreme lack of protocol support: you can’t use it with email clients, VoIP, games, video chats, music and video streaming, and so on.

SecurityKISS just fine for browsing, though. And if you need more than even the most basic “economy” plan (around $4 a month) makes a real difference, providing faster speeds, a monthly 20GB traffic allowance, and support for games, VoIP, music and video streaming. The service website has the full details.

Photo Credit: bicubic/Shutterstock
Office 365 for Government puts Microsoft squarely on Google's turf

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 10:29pm CEST par Ed Oswald

Microsoft is making a play for the lucrative government sector, releasing Office 365 for Government on Wednesday. The service is much like the standard product, including Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and an option to purchase a local version of Office Professional Plus.

Where the government version of Office 365 is different is how it stores data. Government agencies typically require a good deal more security, so all data is stored in a "segregated community cloud". This means data for government customers will be completely separate from other Office 365 users.

"We also know that security and privacy play a big role in any decision to move to the cloud", Office vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer says.

Office 365 already supports a host of privacy standards, including ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, EU Safe Harbor, EU Model Clauses, the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the US Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), some of which are mandatory in government settings.

In addition to these standards, Microsoft says it plans to add support for Information Security (CJIS) policies, and add IPv6 support in September.

Government is a sector that Google already has a decent foothold in. Google Apps for Government has been around now for two years, and has customers in 44 states including the cities of Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Pa., and Orlando, Fla., and the state of Wyoming, among others.

Microsoft is the underdog here, although many municipal, state and federal government entities already use Office products. That gives it an advantage in advocating its services to these bodies. Cost savings are a major factor in adopting the cloud, and many municipalities are scrambling to save money in light of sagging tax revenues and higher expenses. That could be Microsoft's "in".

Office 365 for Government is available immediately, the company says.

Photo Credits: James Thew/Shutterstock
Siri sucks

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 10:10pm CEST par Joe Wilcox
Yesterday, during the annual D conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company is "doubling down" on Siri. Improvements are coming -- promised without admission of problems, although complaints about them are many. Then there's the lawsuit claiming Siri fails to meet advertised capabilities. You could interpret Cook's promise as concession Siri sucks or that Apple is preparing to take on Google in search. I see it both ways.

Five years ago, Apple supercharged the smartphone category with a more natural user interface. Suddenly, there was a new way to interact with a mobile phone that was seemingly magical. Humanness made the original iPhone stand apart from all competitors, and Apple used a variety of sensors to imbue the quality. Touch, and its intimacy, and the way the handset responded to your proximity gave it the human quality. But Apple has done little since, other than Siri, which does add a little more humanness to iPhone 4S. She adds personality and extends the mobile user interface to another more important than touch: Voice. Problem: There's something inhuman about Siri's often frustrating responses to questions.

"I've never had luck with her for anything", my 17 year-old daughter told me this morning about Siri. She's an avid, and I would say addicted, iPhone user. "When I ask for directions the distance is always wrong. She will say it's 2.8 miles when it's really 4.3 miles. It's farther away".

Google "Siri sucks" and you'll read more of the same. The forum discussions are the most revealing about how much trouble so many people have with Siri.

Jordan Crook's November 2011 post "Siri, why are you so overwhelming?" caught my attention for its plaintive, self-accusing quality. What's that concept they teach in Psychology 101 about the tendency to blame oneself when abused by someone else? "Siri isn’t perfect, and perfect is what I expected", Crook writes in a missive about dissatisfaction. But there is excuse through self blame, which had better be facetious: "Siri misunderstands me all the time. Maybe I mumble, or maybe it’s because I’m talking to her like I would talk to any human personal assistant...That’s the thing about the disappointment Siri brings with her -- in the end it’s my fault".

Jordan, it's not your fault. I used Siri, too, and found her to be about as reliable as starting an old car in a Maine winter. Some days the engine turns over, many more it doesn't.

Fresh Tests

Twice before today I conducted comparative tests -- my daughter's iPhone 4S against a Google phone: "Galaxy Nexus shames iPhone 4S Siri" and "Siri humbled my Android", which it didn't, but I wrote the headline before conducting the tests and decided to keep it.

Before my daughter darted off to school this morning, I requested to borrow her iPhone 4S for 5 minutes. She grudgingly gave it up (My God, what if she missed a text!). I asked Siri three questions also put to Galaxy Nexus HSPA+:
- "I have a flat tire, what should I do?"
- "My cat has fleas, what should I do?"
- "How far is Alpha Centauri from Earth?"
Siri's answers:
- "How about a web search for 'I have a flat tire what should I do'?"
- "How about a web search for 'My cat has fleas, what should I do'?"
- "Sorry Princess, I can only get directions starting from your current location".
How about Earth, as current location, bitch?

Galaxy Nexus responds with no soothing (dare I say mocking) Siri voice or pretty white text against dark grey. But the Android delivers answers I can use, from Google search pages:
- The first response leads to Wikipedia entry "flat tire", followed by "How to change a flat tire?" from Edmunds.com.
- To the second, Yahoo Answers to the exact question asked.
- Finally, WikiAnswers: "4.4 light years away. We're talking 44 trillion km".
Way to go Galaxy Nexus.

Later, since my daughter had gone to school, I asked colleague Ed Oswald to ask another question. "Siri, do you suck?" Her answer: "I'm just trying to help you".

Voice is Your Bond

Apple is right to focus on voice, which is a much more natural user interface for a mobile device than touch. More importantly, if Siri could actually get the answers right, Apple would have a powerful competitive weapon to blast away Google mobile search share. There, Cook's "doubling down" is as much, if not more, about transforming the mobile search experience, and that means butting heads with Google. Better: Someday replacing Google with Siri search on iOS devices. But that's not viable as long as Siri sucks.

Hype is part of the problem -- Siri getting too much of it and Google's unnamed voice features not getting enough of it. Apple bought Siri in early 2010 and tacked it onto iPhone 4S in late 2011. Google has done work on voice capabilities longer, and it shows. My colleague Tim Conneally took a first look at Google's voice-recognition engine in June 2009. By January 2010, when Nexus One launched, Google hyped the phone's surprisingly strong voice capabilities.

I explained then: "Jack Consumer can speak 'Pizza Hut' and the phone will use GPS to find the nearest restaurant and then offer turn-by-turn vocal navigation on how to get there". Say, doesn't that ring familiar, like something you might have seen or heard about Siri? More: "Better still, Google has enabled voice capabilities for all text fields in Android 2.1. Who needs a keyboard when he or she can speak to text or twitter? Apple made iPhone something magical by the way it responds to touch. Google is taking the input and interaction hands free, which is even better".

All that came long before Siri arrived in beta -- where it still is today, as Apple often observes when excusing performance. To that I say: If it's still beta and not really ready for the masses, why are you so aggressively marketing Siri, Apple? There are three -- or is it four -- new TV commercials this month. Answer: Apple is pulling a 1990's Microsoft; release a product before it's really ready so as to gain market share against a competitor. Apple knows that voice is the future of mobile user interfaces.

But such strategy risks ticking off customers, unless like Crook they blame themselves. Meanwhile Apple glows in the bask of presumed innovation for technology paid for and following behind Google advances.

What's that saying? No risk, no rewards. If Apple can conquer voice by iterating improvements and truly match or even exceed Google in mobile search, the game changes. Apple changes the rules like it did in so many other product categories -- digital content creation software, app stores, MP3/video players, media playback software, smartphones and tablets, among others. Cook and Company should be "doubling down". Whomever wins mobile search takes the prize.
BetaNews giveaway: One year of premium Safe Shepherd 'Privacy-as-a-Service'

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 8:02pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Venture-backed startup Safe Shepherd is a service we can really get behind. Users sign up and enter their personal information (personal names or aliases, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, etc.) into a profile, and Safe Shepherd locates that information on data broker websites and then erases it.

It helps protect your information against sites like BeenVerified.com, Radaris, Spokeo, and RapLeaf, which scrape whatever data they can find and sell it to marketers, or even worse, to potential identity thieves.

With a free Safe Shepherd account, you can scan for loose personal information records and erase them, and you can receive alerts whenever the information turns up again. As a premium member to the service ($14 per month or $65 a year), Safe Shepherd keeps monitoring for your data even when you're not logged into the site, and works a bit harder to scrub out the difficult records. As long as you're a member of Safe Shepherd, it keeps looking out for your information and alerts you whenever it turns up on one of these sites.

Today, we're giving away 30 one-year premium memberships to Safe Shepherd. The first 30 people to add me on Twitter (@timconneally) will get a direct message with the code to claim their free membership.

(UPDATE: The 30 free memberships have been given away, but we've also got 100 codes for a permanent 40% off of your premium Safe Shepherd membership, so you can get 146 free days every year. The same rules apply, follow me on Twitter and I'll send you the code for the discount. Thanks!)
Deskspace turns your desktop into a 3D virtual cube

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 6:21pm CEST par Mark Wilson

You don’t have to have too many programs running to start to find the amount of space available on your desktop to be a little tight. Rather than rushing out to buy a larger monitor, you might want to think about trying a virtual desktop tool. There are plenty of these apps to choose from, many of which are very similar top each other, but DeskSpace stands out from the crowd with a delightful 3D interface.

The program provides you with six virtual desktops, each of which is the face of a cube. You can navigate from desktop to desktop by dragging your way around the cube faces in three dimensions, but you also have the option of jumping straight to a particular workspace by using a keyboard shortcut or a menu. This is not the first time that a three dimensional concept has been used in virtual desktops, but here it has been beautifully implemented.

The animation effects when moving from one desktop to another are impressively smooth and fluid, and the fact that each of your virtual desktops can be assigned its own background image helps with fast identification. As well as a unique background, each desktop can have its own set of shortcuts that will be loaded every time you have the program running -- this is a great way to give each desktop a specific purpose.

Applications and windows can be easily moved between virtual spaces by just moving them to the edge of the screen. Although there are free tools available that provide you with extra work space, this is an app that is worth considering paying for -- take the trial version for a test drive and you’re sure to fall in love with it. DeskSpace is surprisingly light on system resources, and you will find that it works well even on older computers, laptops and slower hardware.

You can find out more and download a trial version of the app by paying a visit to the DeskSpace review page.
API Monitor 2.0 may only be alpha, but it gets the job done

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 6:09pm CEST par Mike Williams

When you need to track an application’s behavior then Sysinternals Process Monitor is a great place to start. In a click or two you can be watching the target program’s file, Registry and process-related activities, perfect for troubleshooting all kinds of odd problems.

Of course Process Monitor is watching only a relatively small number of Windows API calls, in an effort to keep things simple. These are well chosen, and will help you solve most common issues. But if your problem relates to something the program doesn’t track, an Internet function, say, then you might want to try a more powerful troubleshooting tool, like API Monitor.

We say “might”, because API Monitor is a full-strength developers tool. It can track thousands of API calls, will tell you about parameters, return values and call stacks, allow you to set breakpoints, and generally provide all kinds of information and options which will leave non-developers baffled.

And yet, the program’s core operation really is simple enough that experienced Windows users might find it useful for troubleshooting purposes. (And as it’s free, portable and a relatively small download, there’s no harm in giving it a try.)

As an example, launch Internet Explorer and load a web page (anything will do).

Launch apimonitor-x86.exe as an Administrator (if you’re using Windows Vista or later; fire up apimonitor-x64.exe if you’re running 64-bit IE).

Over in the top left corner you’ll see the API Filter pane, which tells the program which API calls you’d like to monitor. Find and check “Internet” in the list.

In the bottom left corner you’ll see a list of running processes. Find iexplore.exe, right-click it and select “Start Monitoring” (repeat that for any other copies of iexplore.exe you might have in that list).

Switch back to Internet Explorer, click any link and allow the new page to load.

Now return to API Monitor, and you’ll see the Summary pane now has a (probably) lengthy list of web-related calls to IEFRAME.dll, urlmon.dll and more. Calls with errors will be highlighted in yellow, and the “Error” column will tell you more, so even if you’ve absolutely zero programming knowledge then you might be able to pick up some useful troubleshooting clues from what’s available here.

If you’d like more detail, just click on a particular call -- one of the “CommitURLCacheEntryA” entries, say -- and check the Parameters window for information on URLs, file names, dates, times and everything else being passed by IE.

And while we’ve just chosen the Internet category for this brief example, there are plenty of other interesting options in the API Filter pane :”Devices”, “DirectX Graphics and Gaming”, “Documents and Printing”, “Networking” and more, each capable of displaying a huge amount of information about what’s happening on your PC.

Of course Process Monitor should still remain top of your list for troubleshooting odd program and system behaviour: it’s powerful enough to help you solve most issues, while remaining relatively easy to use.

If Process Monitor can’t help, though, it may be worth giving API Monitor a try. The program is vastly more complex, but an experienced PC user should still be able to produce basic reports from it without too much difficulty, and these may provide troubleshooting clues which simply aren’t available any other way.

Please note, though, the download we’re referencing here is an alpha build, and so likely to contain bugs. We had no problems in our testing, but play safe anyway: don’t run API Monitor on any system where you’ve unsaved documents, or while you’re running other important tasks.

Photo Credit: kentoh/Shutterstock
CyberLink revs PhotoDirector 10, PowerDVD 12 and MediaShow 6 for AMD A-Series APUs

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 5:44pm CEST par Nick Peers

Taipei, Taiwan-based CyberLink has issued updates for its flagship media viewing and editing products, including CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Deluxe, CyberLink PowerDVD 12 Pro and CyberLink MediaShow 6 Ultra.

The updates are all designed to take full advantage of the new second-generation AMD A-Series APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) recently launched by AMD. APUs integrate graphics and CPU chips on to a single die for performance gains and are currently available on new notebooks, with desktop chips due later this year.

The updates are specifically designed to take advantage of the new A-Series performance improvements with hardware-accelerated HD playback, enhanced video editing, maximum rendering and improved transcoding performance.

As a result, CyberLink claims that the update will speed up video production times in PowerDirector 10 by up to 3.6 times on hardware running second-gen A-Series APUs thanks to its ability to harness the GPU portion of the chip to improve the editing process, specifically the encoding and transcoding of video.

PowerDVD 12’s DLNA Media Server is now capable of streaming videos on the fly to portable devices thanks to the VCE transcoding technology in the new AMD chips, allowing the computer to effortlessly convert the video if required into a format supported by your portable device.

Finally, CyberLink MediaShow 6, the company’s video/photo organization tool, promises to speed up the creation of stylish slideshow videos thanks to the technologies built into these new chips.

CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Deluxe, CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Ultra, CyberLink PowerDVD 12 Pro, CyberLink PowerDVD 12 Ultra and CyberLink MediaShow 6 Ultra are all available as trial downloads for high-end PCs running Windows XP or later, as is CyberLink Media Suite 10 Ultra, which includes all three products as well as a range of other media tools. These and other CyberLink products can be purchased with significant discounts on offer at the Downloadcrew Software Store.

To enjoy the performance benefits of the latest updates, users will need a PC running an AMD second-generation A-series APU. AMD has announced the availability of five second-gen A-Series APUs at launch: three for mainstream notebooks (A10-4600M, A8-4500M and A6-4400M) and two for ultrathin notebooks (A10-4655M, A6-4455M).
What would you pay for a 7-inch, quad-core Asus-made, Googe-branded Android 4.1 Nexus tablet?

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 5:18pm CEST par Joe Wilcox
Rumor stories are uncommon here at BetaNews, and rare when we don't get the information ourselves. But Android Police has got one so tasty and so in line with others, I can't resist. In less than one month, Google could debut the highly-anticipated Nexus tablet, produced in conjunction with Asus and packing quad-core Tegra 3 processor and Android 4.1. The only question, if rumors prove to be true, is price. What would you pay for a 7-inch Asus-made, Googe-branded Nexus tablet?

David Ruddock reports evidence from Rightware's Power Board benchmark and Android Police server logs showing instances of Androd 4.1 and Nexus devices. But the benchmark tool is more revealing: 1.3GHz nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1280 x 768 resolution display, Google brand and product name Google Asus Nexus 7. That's hardly a smoking gun. Asus and Google could be testing a prototype device, or even several. But given that Google I/O starts June 27, developers received tablets there last year and the search giant promised a Nexus tablet in about six months half a year ago, the discovery is too credible to ignore.

Something else: Android 4.1 is listed as Jelly Bean. If true, then Ice Cream Sandwich's successor will come sooner than most Google watchers expect, and it won't be version 5. That's a risky but courageous move to make, just as the Android tablet market limps along to ICS. For the 14 days leading up to May 1, Ice Cream Sandwich accounted for 4.9 percent of devices accessing Google Play. I expect Google to update the stats either June 1st or 2nd.

Timing -- and perception -- is everything in business. Microsoft is planning to release a final preview build of Windows 8 in just a few days. Apple's developer conference, where next iOS and OS X versions are expected to take center stage, starts June 11. Twelve days after Worldwide Developer Conference ends, Google gets the last say in June. Nexus tablet, and Jelly Bean, delivered at the right price could shake the earth. Rumors are $199, but I'm not so sure.

Earlier this month I purchased the Asus Transformer Pad 300 for $390 and some change from Amazon. The tablet retails for $399 and packs 10.1-inch display and quad-core Tegra 3 processor. Could Google really sell an Asus-made tablet with top-of-line processor and graphics for 200 bucks less? Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is an attractive 7-inch dual core tablet selling for $249. How could Google really offer so much more for so much less?

The answer: There's no other choice. As I explained about a month ago, Google has lost control of Android. Two hugely successful OEMs, Amazon and Samsung, are fracturing the platform. They are seizing control with their customized-Android versions. Meanwhile, other device makers lollygag around updating their tablet customers to the newest Android version.

Asus is the exception, by the way, and that's another factor making Android Police's findings and conclusion about them credible. Asus ships stock Android on its tablets, with few modifications, and updates fairly quickly. My Transformer Pad shipped with Android 4.0.3, for example. (But, hey, where's 4.0.4, Asus?)

A $199 Nexus tablet could:
- Expand Android tablet market share against iPad
- Provide tablet buyers with a pure Android experience
- Move more of the install base to the newest Android version
- Wrestle control of the Android ecosystem from Amazon and Kindle Fire
What would you pay for a 7-inch, quad-core Asus-made, Googe-branded Android 4.1 Nexus tablet?

I can't express enough the importance of the latter one. As I explained in early April, "Google isn't trying to save Android but kill Kindle Fire". Low price, and a compelling stack of curated services similar to Apple's, define Kindle Fire. But a similarly-priced, widely-distributed Nexus tablet selling for the same price could devastate Amazon's Android lead.

Hell, I'd even spend $299. But for $199, I'd buy one for my mom, wife, daughter and father-in-law. What would you pay?
SysExporter 1.60 grabs data stored in otherwise inaccessible Windows controls

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 4:30pm CEST par Mike Williams

NirSoft has released SysExporter 1.60, the latest version of an interesting tool that allows you to grab data stored in otherwise inaccessible Windows controls: list views, tree views, list boxes and more. And if you’ve not used the program before this may sound a little odd, but SysExporter does have plenty of practical applications.

Suppose, for example, you wanted to make a note of the video files supported by VLC Media Player. You can see them by clicking File > Open and opening the file type list, but there’s no way to copy that text to the clipboard. And so you either have to retype them manually, or waste time browsing the documentation or website in the hope that there’s a more accessible list elsewhere.

If you’ve a copy of SysExporter running, though, all you have to do is drag and drop its target icon onto the list box and the text is immediately displayed, ready for copying to the clipboard and pasting wherever you like: it’s all over in seconds.

And the big news with SysExporter 1.60 is that it finally introduces support for Microsoft’s DirectUI, which means you can also use the program to grab the contents of Windows 7 Explorer windows. If you’d like to copy the folder structure or file names from a particular folder into another document, again it’s just a matter of dragging and dropping the target icon onto the appropriate Windows pane and the program will fetch the key text for you.

This doesn’t work quite as well as we’d like, unfortunately. It seems SysExporter must scroll through a window in order to capture its contents, and if you’ve chosen a folder with a lot of files then this could take quite some time (grabbing the contents of the \Windows\System32 folder on our test PC required a wait of almost 20 seconds).

Of course this is still considerably quicker than entering the various file names manually, though, and on balance SysExporter 1.60 remains a convenient way to grab text which would otherwise be very difficult to access.

Photo Credit olly/Shutterstock
Adobe rolls out Lightroom 4.1 and Camera Raw 7.1 updates

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 4:25pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Graphic design software company Adobe on Wednesday launched the final release versions of its Lightroom 4.1 photography software and Camera Raw 7.1 Photoshop plug-in.

These updates add some new features, correct some bugs, and broaden device support.

Lightroom 4.1 is the first major version update since Lightroom 4 was released in March, and it includes the ability to process HDR TIFF files (16, 24, or 32-bit,) and adds more color fringing corrections to address the issue of chromatic aberration, or the presence of thin bands of color or ghostly borders on super high contrast parts of photos (Shown in picture above, Adobe explains the phenomenon in this blog post.)
Photobooks created in the Book Module can now be saved as JPEG files, and photos can be published to Adobe Revel with the aptly-named Publish plugin.

Camera Raw 7.1 adds similar features, including the ability to read 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit HDR files (TIFF/DNG,) and new Defringe controls for the aforementioned chromatic aberration phenomenon. Defringe has been woven into the Lens Correction panel. Customers of previous versions of Photoshop can utilize DNG Converter 7.1 for raw file support for newly added cameras, which includes:
• Canon EOS 1D X
• Canon EOS 5D Mark III
• Canon EOS 60Da
• Canon PowerShot G1 X
• Fuji FinePix F505EXR
• Fuji FinePix F605EXR
• Fuji FinePix F770EXR
• Fuji FinePix F775EXR
• Fuji FinePix HS30EXR
• Fuji FinePix HS33EXR
• Fuji X-Pro1
• Leica M Monochrom (DNG)
• Leica X2 (DNG)
• Nikon D4
• Nikon D800
• Nikon D800E
• Olympus OM-D E-M5
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF5
• Pentax K-01
• RICOH LENS A16 24-85mm F3.5-5.5
• Samsung NX20
• Samsung NX210
• Samsung NX1000

Lightroom 4.1 for Windows and Mac is available as a free download for Lightroom 4 customers, and the Camera Raw plug-in is available as a free download for Photoshop CS6 customers.
Flamer is too effective to be ignored

Publié: mai 30, 2012, 2:00am CEST par David Harley

The news and specualtion around Win32/Flamer is extensive and complex. While it is understandable that what appears to be a sophisticated threat found in several regions, some of them particularly politically sensitive, has excited so much interest. Conflicting conjecture and confusion over the "ownership" of the detection is muddying the waters somewhat.

According to the Iran National CERT, it had detection (but not removal) for the malware in early May, but Kaspersky claims it’s been in the wild since March 2010. This seems to be the same malware theat that the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) in Budapest calls sKyWIper (which they believe may have been active for 5-8 years or even longer). However, it looks as if those assumptions on timing are incorrect: module compilation dates have been manipulated, presumably in order to hamper researchers in some way.

Nonetheless, the Budapest lab has some interesting initial analysis, which shouldn’t be overlooked. While I’m reluctant to add to the confusion, it seems to be of interest that the malware has been reported not only in the Middle East/Western Asia (including Israel, curiously enough), but also in Eastern Europe (notably Hungary and Austria) and even Hong Kong.

Whether it’s actually targeting a specific country is not clear: after all, Stuxnet is nowadays assumed to have been targeting Iran, but was originally detected over a very wide area. While there’s speculation that Flamer is linked in some way to Stuxnet and Duqu, that seems to me to be -- well, speculative, as most of the code seems very different.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is that the Iran National CERT (Maher) has volunteered to share samples with security vendors even though many software vendors (notably those headquartered in the US) are unable to trade legally with Iran. (Bizarrely, these malicious programs are running in Iran on an operating system that Microsoft can’t export to Iran.) This restriction may have hampered initial detection of the malware by security vendors outside the region, but samples have subsequently trickled into the mainstream via secondary sources.

The whole episode seems strangely reminiscent of the excitement back in 1990 about Whale. This was a very large, very complex, heavily-armoured virus that attracted a great deal of detailed analysis: as Alan Solomon said later, far more analysis than was really necessary to write detection for the thing. I guess researchers had more spare time in those days.

There is a difference, though: Whale was significant because of the array of interesting techniques it contained, but as malware it was barely functional. Flamer, however, looks to be too effective to be ignored, even though detection for it is already widespread. In that respect, it is like Stuxnet: no-one will be happy until we have a better idea of the who, the whys and the wherefores behind it.

Reprinted with permission.

Photo Credit: kentoh/Shutterstock

David Harley BA CITP FBCS CISSP is an English IT security researcher, author/editor and consultant known for his prolific blogs and articles and his books on and research into topics like malware, Mac security, anti-malware product testing and management of email abuse. He works closely with ESET, where, since 2011, he has held the position of Senior Research Fellow.