Pwned by English, Scammy Christmas, TechCrunch Design, Facebook Numbers
by Nat Torkington
| @gnat
| Comments: 1
| 24 November 2009
- English Shellcode (PDF) -- paper presented at ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, showing how to encode arbitrary x86 shell code (the payload in a malware or other attack that elevates privileges and pwns your machine) as something that looks, at first glance, to be English text. Impressive piece of work. (via Slashdot)
- The Twelve Scams of Christmas (McAfee) -- a press release, but one to send to all your civilian (non-computer-professional) friends. Scam IV: The Dangers of Holiday E-Cards. Cyber thieves cash in on consumers who send holiday e-cards in an effort to be environmentally conscious. Last holiday season, McAfee Labs discovered a worm masked as Hallmark e-cards and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola holiday promotions. Holiday-themed PowerPoint e-mail attachments are also popular among cybercriminals. Be careful what you click on.
- TechCrunch Deconstructed -- analysis of TechCrunch's design, talking about what works and what might be problematic. Boxing in the ad around a piece of content helps increase click-through. The logo however doesn't offer much in terms of actions and is likely to reduce the click-through. (via Brady)
- Bebo to Shut Down in Australia -- I don't care about Bebo, but this astonished me. "It's just phenomenal," said Nielsen Online's director of analytics, Mark Higginson. "Every time I run those numbers I have to double check. Australians are spending nearly a third of all their time browsing the internet on Facebook alone."
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Comments: 1
Sam Penrose [25 November 2009 03:06 PM]
Andrew Odlyzko explained (4) back in 1999: people's spending on communication has always and will always be dominated by connecting with individuals they know. See "Content is not King": http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/833/742
"We cannot be certain how the Internet will evolve. However, history teaches us several lessons. ... the value of the myriad social interactions has often been underestimated."