Statutory Warning : If you have not upgraded your WordPress hosted blog to version 2.8.4 then do it right away. WordPress versions below 2.7 are highly venerable to this attack. Matt Mullenweg founder of Wordpress has responded in the WordPress Blog saying
“Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.”
How to check whether your blog is attacked ?
1). Addition of keywords like “eval” and “base64_decode” in your permalinks.
2). An additional Administrator is created. Check your dashboard for an unknow user.
Read this blog by Lorelle on how to secure your blog and what to do if it has already been attacked. Check out the Follow-Up section for a step by step guide to secure your blog.
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Follow-Up
All the three parties have responded to FCC’s letter probing into the rejection of Google Voice iPhone App.
It starts with saying that Google Voice was never rejected by Apple (what?) and AT&T has no role what so ever in the approval/rejection process of the App store. Then Apple says to FCC – look dude Google Voice will one day replace the iPhone’s PHONE features so obviously it is difficult for us to accept it but we are still looking into the matter.
AT&T has out rightly denied that it was in any way related to the rejection of Google Voice app. It also says that AT&T has never been involved in the decision making process of the App store. AT&T points out at the end that the app can any way be downloaded from the internet and can be used on its network.
Google has acted smart by censoring the most important part of the response – Google did not revealed it publically the reasons given of Apple for rejecting the Google Voice App. Rest of the response is very predictable. Google says that the app has better feature than web based version.
Follow-Up
Apple (more info) tried to make a “no employee stealing” deal with Palm (more info) very similar to what it has with Google. Bloomberg News has discovered that Steve Jobs (more info) called up Ed Colligan then-CEO of Plam and said
“We must do whatever we can to stop this”
Colligan after pondering over the matter refused the deal saying
“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal”
The interesting part is Steve offered this deal in August 07 after he had poached almost 2% of Palm’s workforce to develop iPhone! Apparently Palm snatched Jon Rubinstein (more info) from Apple who headed Apple’s iPod unit. Since then Palm has hired quite a few of Apple’s top employees including Jeff Zwerner (now Brand Design-Chief @Palm), Mike Bell (Senior VP of Product-Development @Palm) and Lynn Fox (PR head @Palm). Rubinstein is now Palm’s CEO. It won’t be surprising if Apple already has similar agreements with its other competitors. Whether this is illegal or not is one issue other being robbing the employees of their opportunities.
Follow-Up
Today Palm (more info) has launched it App store and asked developers to submit their webOS Applications for Palm App Catalog e-commerce beta program. Palm Pre (more info) currently has only 30 (oops!) apps. Here are basic details
1). 70% of revenue goes to the developers.
2). Limited to US as of now.
3). Both free and paid( minimum .99 cents) apps allowed.
4). Should follow the quality standards laid down by Palm.
5). Apps have to submitted via E-Mail, no dedicated interface available yet.
Well this is very similar to way Apple (more info) started with its App store and many of the conditions/details are almost similar.
Other piece of App news comes from RIM (more info) who has now made it easier for Blackberry (more info) user to download Apps from Blackberry App World Store. A web version in now available and in order to download the app, you just need submit your E-Mail and the download link will be send to you mobile device.
Will this disturb Apple? Not at all. Both Palm and RIM are far behind Apple and Android (more info) in the smart phone Apps busniness.
Follow-Up
Facebook (more info) has submitted v 3.0 of their iPhone App for review to Apple (more info). Facebook software engineer (and one of the firefox creators) Joe Hewitt tweeted a while back. This facebook app will allow video uploads for the first time (on 3GS). Hewitt will be posting screen shots of the app (on this page) in coming time which will further clear what the app is all about. This app should be approved in a short span of time from Apple and probably our good friend AT&T won’t have problems with this one! So, expect this to be up and running very soon. Facebook app is one of the most awaited app for iPhone for obvious reasons. Let’s wait and watch.
Any futher details we will let you know….
Update : The new version is lot more improved from the previous version that facebook launched in September. It has loads of new features, redesigned and is much faster then the previous versions. Have a look at this post for a detailed feature analysis.
Follow-Up
- Apple is planning a keynote sometime around the 1st week of September according to All Things Digital.
- Zune HD is coming out on 15th September, Microsoft announced today.
As rumoured earlier Apple might come out with camera iPods + there is a possibility of the much speculated Tablet [ Update :with -ve reports rolling in now ]or latest rumour Tapplet being announced by Steve. It likely that the event will have a lot of music in it because apparently the possible dates of the keynote are leaked by music industry executives. It could be the Cocktail format Apple has been working on.
Zune comes with loads of improvement and an awesome design with OLED screen. It is even priced at $220/$290 (16GB/32GB) much cheaper than iPod Touch. Believe it not this time Zune looks very much competent with iPods. Now here comes the twist in the story! What if Apple announces some major upgrades (like camera) and drop in iPod Touch’s price (which it traditionally should) come September 7? Answer: Zune will no longer be competent enough, AGAIN! Why would anyone go for a gadget with less features (no camera + whatever else coming) when they are getting a feature rich gadget made of Apple and sold by Steve?
Follow-Up
Apple (more info) is reportedly working to integrate some social feature with iTunes (more info). This has come from an anonymous source at BoyGeniusReport also have a look at the screen shots of iTunes 9. Consider this a rumour and only rumour for the time being. It broadly says 3 things
1). The application will allow you to broadcast your “music status” i.e. title of the songs you are listening to as status update to various social networks.
2). Will consolidate your social networking activity to a single place.
3). It is could be something very similar to Yahoo’s OneConnect.
It is still not clear whether this going to be an iPhone App or a desktop app (or both).
What could this mean? This social networking app if at all coming can be used as a launch pad for almost all major social networks. User might also be able to casually monitor other social networks and options like Facebook connect, Sign-In With Twitter, OpenID etc could be an obvious addition. You will be able to update you status (+ status of the songs you are listening to) and see your online friends and their messages from a single place. Too much of speculation now! Rest.
Follow-Up
Breaking News: Facebook (more info) has acquiredFriendfeed (more info) . This news has spread virally in matter of just 15 minutes. Both the companies have updated their blogs.
“We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…
The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision.”
“Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.”
This will be a huge huge booster for facebook. As we said earlier that facebook is trying too hard to enter the real time game. After failing to acquire Twitter at the starting of the year this deal could just change the direction of real time wind in facebook’s favour. Let’s watch out. But I guess Mark Zuckerberg (more info) has arrived! Tough times ahead for Twitter.
Update : Wall Street journal says that Facebook paid around $50 million (cash + stock) to Friendfeed. Break up –
Cash – $15 million
Stock (based on latest valuations) – 32.5 million
Facebook and Friend feed have not given any details about the financial terms of the deal.
Update 2 : Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchhiet shared some pictures of the meeting immediately after the deal was signed.
Follow-Up
The New York Times reports today that a small bank is now planning to allow its customers to deposit checks by iPhone. USAA (more info), a bank with 7.2 million customers and only one branch in San Antonio is upgrading it iPhone app so that customers can send the photograph of both sides of the check to the bank. USAA’s executive vice president says
“We’re essentially taking an image of the check, and once you hit the send button, that image is going into our deposit-taking system as any other check would”
USAA already allows customers to scan and deposit checks.
USAA has around 1 million customers who use mobile to access their bank account. According to comScore (more info) around 15 million people in the United States use mobile banking each month of which the majority use an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Though this will remove a lot of paper work but recent surveys indicate that people are not very comfortable with mobile-banking because of security reasons. Will big banks follow the suite? I doubt. But paper work procrastinators like me will love this idea and embrace it with not so insecure mind. Check out the demo video of USAA’s app.
Follow-Up
Biz Stone has updated Twitter Blog stating the attack on Twitter is still on and it could be geopolitical in nature. We reported something similar yesterday after the attack started on Thursday. Biz Stone writes
“The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations”
“Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon.”
The worst part : There are even reports that this attack has actually grown 10 folds over the period of time. Have a look at Twitter Development Talk.
This is something very very rare and web has never seen anything like this before. This just gives us glimpse of the times we are in. The war between the nations is now slowly but steadily moving from battle ground to the web. Don’t be surprised if you see major chunk defense budgets going into web web war fare in coming times. Welcome to War 2.0
More updates coming as soon as we learn more.
Follow-Up
