All the recent privacy issues and rather shady dealings with Facebook have promted the development of a group of students who might have a better idea on how to do social networking. I for one am hoping they succeed. Facebook has some issues that need to be addressed. The most glaring that I can see is their policy of having rights to content that is posted. Such as pictures. This post on The Consumerist does a good job of summing up the T.O.S. at Facebook.

These students recently acquired full funding and as we speak are most likely hard at work developing what we hope will be a MUCH better social network than Facebook.

Recent news on the alternative to Facebook: Diaspora

Seems that Apple has some vulnerabilities that it has quietly gone ahead and taken care of. Mac OS X 10.6.4 includes limited protection against a trojan labeled OSXPinhead -B. this one has capabilities to allow a hacker to gain remote control for the purpose of identity theft.

I guess the days of MAC users professing how they never have to worry about viruses and trojans are officially over.

Apple secretly updates Mac malware protection, Sophos reveals

There is a known vulnerability in Windows Help and Support Center that could lead to your PC becoming infected from a visit to a malicious website. Experts are now seeing hackers taking advantage of it. There will be an official patch coming from Microsoft, however you can remediate this rather easily with a fix that Microsoft has issued. Simply visit this site and click the Enable This Fix button. You will be prompted to download a small file which you can save to your desktop or other convenient spot that you can easily find it. Once downloaded double click it to execute and follow the simple instructions. My suggestion is to take the time to do this to prevent any possibilities of getting hit with this vulnerability. The Micosoft Fixit Site:

 

Vulnerability in Help Center could allow remote code execution

Adobe has released an official upgrade to its Flash Player. It includes 31 patches. Be sure if prompted to do the upgrade if it is installed on your PC. Also you will have to do this twice if you are using more than one browser. Once for IE and then again for alternative browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

Here is a link to Adobe's Installation Page

Okay Apple users, wanna comment on this one? It appears that the IPad has been hacked and 114,000 users e-mail and possibly other personal information has been exposed. Nice! Although it does appear that AT&T was also at fault. Apparently the hackers obtained the information from AT&T's website to harvest the data on the IPad users. Huge screw-up and doesn't do much for confidence in either the IPAD, or the AT&T network.

Full Story: 

Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed

If you are using Google to search on the internet there is a very simple method to protect yourself from malicious search engine results. To accomplish this simply use SSL for your search. i.e. use https://www.google.com as your starting point. This prevents you from getting redirected to these sites. There are more and more hackers using this method to infect people with malware. So, now you have a good and simple method to block these sites.

 

From Adobe:

A critical vulnerability exists in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, and the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX operating systems. This vulnerability (CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat. This advisory will be updated once a schedule has been determined for releasing a fix.

AFFECTED SOFTWARE VERSIONS

Adobe Flash Player 10.0.45.2, 9.0.262, and earlier 10.0.x and 9.0.x versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris
Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.3.2 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX

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There is a new threat on Facebook. It involves tricking users into clicking links that mark the clicked site as one of your Facebook "likes" Be very careful with the sites you visit and mark. If you click on a site that is not legitimate, you will start spreading this nasty.

For full information and a decent way to check before you "like" a site, hop over to the ReadWriteWeb site. They have a link there to Kyle Bragger's idea of installing a "Like" bookmark tool that will make it safer to use this Facebook feature