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Google plans big changes for Reader | BBC News

October 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google is planning to strip some features from its Reader to boost the Google+ social network.

In a blogpost, the company revealed that the sharing features on its RSS news reader would soon be removed.

Instead, anyone wanting to share or highlight posts on blogs and websites will have to do so via integrated Google+ tools.

Reader, like many other Google services, will also get a new look in the next few days.

The blogpost by Google software engineer Alan Green said that the changes would be coming to Reader “in the next week”.

The first change will be the re-design to change how it looks and then it and Google+ will be brought “closer together”.

via BBC News – Google plans big changes for Reader.

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Credit Card Squares: Square Releases a Credit Card Reader for the iPhone – iSmashPhone iPhone Blog

April 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The iPhone has made a major step forward to interacting with customers financially, and credit cards have another step towards use in even the most casual of situations.

Square, Inc. has just released an iPhone app / Hardware combination that allows you to read credit cards right on your iPhone.  The ability to use your iPhone as a credit card reader has been discussed for years, and now it has been made practical on the consumer level for average users.

via Credit Card Squares: Square Releases a Credit Card Reader for the iPhone – iSmashPhone iPhone Blog.

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Windows 8 to get Native PDF Reader, Immersive UI > Software > Techtree.com

April 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Microsoft seems to be giving a design overhaul to its next major operating system Windows 8. Two days ago, we reported about the screenshots of Windows 8 put up by Windows platform hacker Rafael Rivera and Windows IT Pro News Editor, Paul Thurrott. From the initial screenshots, it’s fairly clear that Microsoft is experimenting with the implementation of Metro User Interface design language. Now the new screenshots posted at Rivera’s WithinWindows Blog show that Microsoft will have a native PDF Reader and several other applications including Internet Explorer with new Immersive UI.

Even though we’ve kind of settled with Windows 7 Service Pack 1 update, sneak peek to Windows 8 features have started showing up on the interwebs. Rivera has posted new screenshots of Internet Explorer aimed to work in full screen and shows tile based Metro user interface implications. The Internet Explorer is expected to work in full screen and shows browser history in the form of tiles. The Windows 8 UI is termed as Immersive and seems difficult to unlock for performing any checks or changes. This new Immersive UI is aimed at tablets and mobile phones.

Microsoft did have some issues implementing Adobe Reader as a feature in Office 2007 and hence it was offered to download as a separate add-on. Also, we all know how many times Adobe Reader has been targeted for several attacks to spread infection in a PC. To overcome that issue, Microsoft would be adding its own PDF (Portable Document Format) dubbed as Modern Reader in Windows 8.

This native PDF Reader will be part of Microsoft’s new application package model codenamed Jupiter and the developers would be able to create Silverlight Apps for Microsoft’s Windows App Store. These Native App Packages will have .AppX application extensions and would be exactly like how Apple is offering digital download of Apps and software from its Mac App Store.

via Windows 8 to get Native PDF Reader, Immersive UI > Software > Techtree.com.

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Adobe Flash Player has ‘critical’ security issue, won’t be addressed until next week

March 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Adobe discovers a “critical” security issue in all versions of Flash Player, plus Acrobat and Reader. A fix is planned for release next week.

If you use Adobe’s Flash Player at all, tread cautiously. The company released a security advisory late yesterday revealing that a “critical vulnerability” was found in pretty much all versions of the multimedia platform as well as in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

Affected versions include: “Adobe Flash Player 10.2.152.33 and earlier versions (Adobe Flash Player 10.2.154.18 and earlier for Chrome users) for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, Adobe Flash Player 10.1.106.16 and earlier versions for Android, and the Authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat X (10.0.1) and earlier 10.x and 9.x versions of Reader and Acrobat for Windows and Macintosh operating systems.”

The vulnerability could result in a crash or potentially be exploited by a hacker to “take control of the affected system.” Worse, there are reports already that this security hole is being exploited via a Flash file (.swf) embedded in a Microsoft Excel (.xls) spreadsheet that arrives as an e-mail attachment. So for the two of you who happily download everything that comes into your mailbox, even if you don’t recognize the sender… stop. It appears that there are no similar exploits out there for Reader or Acrobat yet; Adobe notes that the Protected Mode in Reader X “would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing.”

via Adobe Flash Player has ‘critical’ security issue, won’t be addressed until next week.

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Google quashes 13 Chrome bugs, adds PDF viewer – Computerworld

December 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Google on Thursday patched 13 vulnerabilities in Chrome as it shifted the most stable edition of the browser to version 8.

Chrome 8 also debuted Google’s built-in PDF viewer, an alternative to the bug-plagued Adobe Reader plug-in, and included support for the still-not-launched Chrome Web Store.

The 13 flaws fixed in Chrome 8.0.552.215 are in a variety of components, including the browser’s history, its video indexing and the display of SVG (scalable vector graphics) animations.

Four of the baker’s dozen are tagged as “high” level bugs, Google’s second-most-serious rating, while five are pegged “medium” and four are labeled as “low.”

Google paid $4,000 in bounties to five researchers for reporting vulnerabilities. Since mid-August, Google has handed out over $29,000 in bug bounty payments.

Among the researchers credited with submitting flaws was Nirankush Panchbhai, who works in Microsoft’s vulnerability research group. Panchbhai was not one of the researchers paid a bounty.

via Google quashes 13 Chrome bugs, adds PDF viewer – Computerworld.

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Hackers exploit newest Flash zero-day bug – Computerworld

October 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Adobe today confirmed that hackers are exploiting a critical unpatched bug in Flash Player, and promised to patch the vulnerability in two weeks.

The company issued a security advisory that also named Adobe Reader and Acrobat as vulnerable.

“There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against Adobe Reader and Acrobat,” said Adobe in its warning. The company said it’s seen no sign that hackers are also targeting Flash Player itself.

Those reports came from Mila Parkour, an independent security researcher who notified Adobe early today after spotting and then analyzing a malicious PDF file. According to Parkour, the rigged PDF document exploits the Flash bug in Reader, then drops a Trojan horse and other malware on the victimized machine.

Adobe said that all versions of Flash on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android harbored the bug, and that the “Authplay” component of Reader and Acrobat 9.x and earlier also contained the flaw. Authplay is the interpreter that renders Flash content embedded within PDF files.

via Hackers exploit newest Flash zero-day bug – Computerworld.

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Adobe hits Reader users with 23-patch ‘whammy’ – Computerworld

October 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Adobe patched 23 security vulnerabilities in its Reader PDF viewer on Tuesday, most of them critical, including one that has been exploited by hackers for at least a month or possibly much longer.

Tuesday’s patch job set a record for 2010, and came close to last year’s biggest update, a 29-fix collection Adobe shipped in October 2009.

In September, Adobe promised to speed up the delivery of today’s patches, which were originally meant to ship next week, because attackers were already leveraging a bug in Reader’s and Acrobat’s font parsing.

“Adobe is hitting customers with a double whammy today,” Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, said via e-mail. “Adobe products continue to be at the top of the target list for malware writers.”

“They patched a zero-day flaw in Flash in late September, and today they are releasing their quarterly Acrobat update ahead of schedule because of another zero-day,” Storms said.

Tuesday’s Reader and Acrobat updates also included a patch released more than two weeks ago for Flash, Adobe’s media player. Both Reader and Acrobat include code to run Flash embedded in PDF documents.

Of the 23 bugs Adobe patched, the most notable was the one revealed Sept. 7 by Mila Parkour, an independent security researcher who reported the attack after discovering rigged PDFs attached to e-mail messages.

via Adobe hits Reader users with 23-patch ‘whammy’ – Computerworld.

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Newest Adobe zero-day PDF exploit ‘scary,’ says researcher – Computerworld

September 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The exploit for a critical unpatched bug in Adobe Reader that’s now circulating is “clever” and “impressive,” security researchers said this week.

In an exploit first uncovered on Tuesday by Washington-based researcher Mila Parkour, attackers are using rigged PDF documents that include code to exploit a zero-day vulnerability in the widely used Reader PDF viewer as well as in Acrobat, Adobe’s PDF creation software.

The sophisticated exploit bypasses two important defenses that Microsoft erected to protect Windows, ASLR (address space layout randomization) and DEP (date execution prevention), researchers have confirmed.

“It’s pretty clever,” said Chet Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at security software vendor Sophos. “It circumvents protections like ASLR and DEP. “Its techniques are certainly out of the ordinary and a lot more sophisticated than the garden-variety [PDF] exploit.”

via Newest Adobe zero-day PDF exploit ‘scary,’ says researcher – Computerworld.

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Finding awesome stuff online with Google Reader Play | Official Google Blog

March 10, 2010 By

I use Google Reader a lot — not only to stay on top of the news, but also to find interesting blog posts and articles. I’m always telling my friends about Google Reader, and while some of them love it, others don’t want to take the time to set it up. For those of you who fall into this second category, we’re announcing Google Reader Play, a new product that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone. Reader Play is a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web, customized to the topics you’re interested in, with no setup required.

Items in Reader Play are presented one at a time, and images and videos are automatically enlarged to maximize the viewing experience. We use the technology behind Recommended Items in Reader to populate Reader Play with the most interesting content on the web. While you don’t need a Google account to use Reader Play, your experience will be personalized if you sign in. As you browse, you can let us know which items you enjoy by clicking the “like” button, and we'll use that info to show you other content we think you’ll enjoy.

We think Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn’t find otherwise. We designed it especially for people who don’t want to spend time curating their own set of feeds — but folks who already use Reader can easily use it to read their feeds as well. Just click the feed settings menu on any feed in Reader and select “View in Reader Play.” We’re launching Reader Play as an experiment in Google Labs so that we can test it out, get feedback from you and then improve it as quickly as possible. Visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try, and let us know what you think!

via Official Google Blog: Finding awesome stuff online with Google Reader Play.

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Adobe Will Be Top Target for Hackers in 2010, Report Says – PC World Business Center

December 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications, a security vendor predicted this week.

“Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot,” security vendor McAfee said in its “2010 Threat Predictions” report (PDF).

Hackers usually target the most widely used products in order to achieve the maximum impact. For a long time that has made Microsoft their primary target. But the software giant has tightened security in its recent OS releases, leading hackers to look for additional targets.

Adobe’s CTO acknowledged recently that his company’s software is being attacked more frequently, and said the company has stepped up its efforts to respond.

“We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of attacks, around Reader in particular and also Flash Player to some extent,” CTO Kevin Lynch told reporters at the Adobe Max conference in October. “We’re working to decrease the amount of time between when we know about a problem and when we release a fix. That used to be a couple of months; now it's within two weeks for critical issues.”

via Adobe Will Be Top Target for Hackers in 2010, Report Says – PC World Business Center.

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