Skype at 640 by 480 pixels

… Video chats using Skype, eBay’s popular Internet telephone service, are about to become sharper and more lifelike, at least for those who have high-end new computers and webcams.
Logitech International has released driver software for three webcams that allows them to connect Skype chatters at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, the same resolution as a DVD. … [1]

The supported cameras are;

• Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (rrp AU$149.95)
• Logitech QuickCam Sphere AF (rrp AU$199.95)
• Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks (rrp AU$149.95)

You’ll also need;
Skype 3.6 for Windows (expected to be available in November – currently in beta)
Logitech QuickCam software, version 11.5 (expected to be available in November – currently available )

How do I make high quality video calls?
Logitech webcamThere are a couple of technical bits and bobs you’ll need to have before you can start making high quality video calls. Firstly, you’ll need a webcam that can take high quality video. Secondly, these video calls will require a dual-core processor in your computer. Lastly, high quality video calls require sufficient bandwidth (we recommend 380kb and above). [3]

Don’t try this on dial-up folks

[1] Sharper Skype video chat (2007-OCT-31) [The AGE]
[2] Skype and Logitech announce High Quality Video (2007-OCT-30) [Skype Blogs]
[3] High Quality Video calls [Skype]

This weeks links: 2007-10-30

US a ‘negative role model’ for global torture
Quoting UN rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak – … “Certain human rights such as the prohibition on torture are absolute,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how dangerous a person is, governments have an absolute obligation never to resort to torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.
“In my opinion, this ill-conceived, security-oriented counter-terrorism strategy is having a very, very negative effect not only on human rights in the USA — but for the first time I would say in a long period of time, the US is really engaging in systematic violation of human rights — but also a very negative effect on many other countries.” … (2007-OCT-31) [The AGE]
… But his overall survey is far from confident — in fact he calls it “frightening.” Torture is still “considered a peccadillo,” he says, adding that this is now the case “even in developed countries.” To him, the worst thing is that the West, which constantly emphasizes its ideals and values, has lost the moral upper hand. …
Ever since former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques in Abu Ghraib, “the United States has lost its moral leadership and authority,” Nowak believes. “Today, when the Bush administration criticizes other countries for their human rights abuses, no one takes them seriously anymore.” … (2007-OCT-29) [Spiegel Online]

Leopard Hacked to Run on PCs
The cat and mouse game between hackers and Apple takes another move, with news that Apple’s new Leopard operating system has already been successfully installed on Windows PCs.
The OSx86 Scene forum has released details of how Windows users can migrate to Apple’s new OS, without investing in new hardware — even though installing Leopard on an PC may be counter to Apple’s terms and conditions. [PC World]

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has gestated longer than any release of Mac OS X (other than 10.0, that is). If I had high expectations for 10.5 back in 2005, they’ve only grown as the months and years have passed. Apple’s tantalizingly explicit withholding of information about Leopard just fanned the flames. My state of mind leading up to the release of Leopard probably matches that of a lot of Mac enthusiasts: this better be good. [Ars Technica]

Virtual Worlds Forum Europe 2007
Virtual Worlds Forum – (Sun Oct 28) 450+ attendees from 23 countries, including 80 speakers, joined us at Canvas for four days of workshops, conference and expo.
Podcasts of the First Keynotes and sessions from VWFE2007 and Day Two’s Podcasts

Halloween (2007)

Halloween approaches and we need some new toys!

Oddio Overplay have their excellent Calling All Fiends;

Halloween is meant to be scary, right? Year after year we dust off the old novelty records. While those oldies are fun, they not at all frightening. Oddio Overplay put the challenge to musical artists the world over to create Halloween music that is “frightening, damaging and disturbing.” No “Monster Mash,” instead creepy soundtracks to a fiendish Halloween. They succeeded with CALLING ALL FIENDS! Some of these pieces will creep you right out of your skin.
Everyone involved in this project hopes you have a thrill ride with this music and A Scary and Very Happy Halloween!

Have your text (20 character limit) generated in a Monster Initial Sticker Font.

What else do we have?

• Skull Pumpkin Patterns for Pumpkin carving
• Rhyme Torrents Halloween 2.0

SECURECon 2007

Securing Open Environments
November 7-9 2007
http://securecon.unimelb.edu.au/

SECURECon aims to provide an annual forum for presentations and workshops on emerging issues and technologies in IT Security. Aimed at IT professionals across all industries SECURECon provides an opportunity for IT Professionals to network and exchange ideas and information.

This year we have some presentations on the theme: Securing Open Environments. Open environments can include open access networks, public web applications and other network services not confined within a corporate LAN.

We also have other technical and non-technical IT Security talks as well as two 3-hour workshops this year. Security auditing using open source security tools and a tutorial on NSA Security Enhanced Linux. At these workshops delegates will be able to gain hands-on experience and feedback within comfortable computer lab environments.

Tour de France 2008 – Race Preview

Tour de France 2008
Missing your sleep deprivations? Start your clocks, the details for the 2008 TDF are available from the www.letour.fr site.

Running from Saturday July 5th to Sunday July 27th 2008, the 95th Tour de France will be made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,500 kilometres.

These 21 stages have the following profiles:

* 10 flat stages,
* 5 mountain stages,
* 4 medium mountain stages,
* 2 individual time-trial stages.

Distinctive aspects of the race

* 4 mountain finishes,
* 2 rest days,
* 82 kilometres of individual time-trials,
* 19 Category 1, Category 2 and highest level passes will be climbed.

More Australian university rankings (2007-Oct)

Ross Williams from Melbourne University’s Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research has ranking the international standing of Australia’s 37 public universities using a scoped methodology;

Overall in research, ANU is ranked first followed by Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland in that order. If scope is ignored Melbourne is first ranked followed by Sydney, Queensland and ANU in that order. — Ross Williams, Melbourne Institute [1]

At the top end of the rankings, allowance for scope moves ANU to first place but the ordering of the other GO8 universities remains unchanged. The result is not surprising given that the ANU medical school is relatively new and the staff profiles of the seven state based GO8 universities are similar. — Ross Williams, Melbourne Institute [2]

[1] Ranking Australian Universities: Controlling for Scope – Executive Summary(PDF) (2007-Oct) [Melbourne Institute]
[2] Ranking Australian Universities: Controlling for Scope (PDF) (2007-Oct) [Melbourne Institute]

Geocaching in Second Life

The worlds first cache that crosses over to a virtual world???

That’s correct folks there is a geocache in Second Life Virtual Geocache (GA0483) on Geocaching Australia. [1]

So how about ‘in world’ geocaching?

Second Life residents can travel to Houlihan, pick up their in-world GPS unit and locate their first cache. The GPS unit is a held item that beeps with increased frequency the closer to the cache. They can then log into the geocaching website and log their find. [2]

Second Life : Geocaching in SL

This will need further investigation

[1] Virtual Geocache (GA0483) [Geocaching Australia]
[2] SLG In the News Again [SLGEOCACHING]
[3] Geocaching in SL (2007-April-04) [SL Games]

Angelina Jolie is popular in Trojan land

Wanna see very sexual Angelina Jolie in short leather skirt and white silk blouse.

Where have we seen this sort of thing before? That’s right, I remember.

Off to virustotal.com for a check;

Antivirus Version Last Update Result
AhnLab-V3 2007.10.23.0 2007.10.22 -
AntiVir 7.6.0.27 2007.10.22 Worm/Ntech.N
Authentium 4.93.8 2007.10.22 W32/Downldr2.AIDS
Avast 4.7.1051.0 2007.10.22 -
AVG 7.5.0.488 2007.10.22 Dropper.Generic.REM
BitDefender 7.2 2007.10.22 Trojan.Kobcka.AA
CAT-QuickHeal 9.00 2007.10.22 TrojanDownloader.Injecter.u
ClamAV 0.91.2 2007.10.22 Trojan.Small-4181
DrWeb 4.44.0.09170 2007.10.22 BackDoor.Bulknet.82
eSafe 7.0.15.0 2007.10.22 Win32.Injecter.u
eTrust-Vet 31.2.5230 2007.10.22 -
Ewido 4.0 2007.10.22 -
FileAdvisor 1 2007.10.23 -
Fortinet 3.11.0.0 2007.10.19 -
F-Prot 4.3.2.48 2007.10.22 W32/Downldr2.AIDS
F-Secure 6.70.13030.0 2007.10.22 Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Injecter.u
Ikarus T3.1.1.12 2007.10.23 Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Injecter.u
Kaspersky 7.0.0.125 2007.10.23 Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Injecter.u
McAfee 5146 2007.10.22 Spy-Agent.bv.dldr
Microsoft 1.2908 2007.10.23 TrojanDropper:Win32/Cutwail.A
NOD32v2 2607 2007.10.22 Win32/TrojanDownloader.Injecter.U
Norman 5.80.02 2007.10.22 -
Panda 9.0.0.4 2007.10.23 Trj/Downloader.QUG
Prevx1 V2 2007.10.23 Heuristic: Suspicious Hijacker
Rising 19.46.02.00 2007.10.22 -
Sophos 4.22.0 2007.10.23 Troj/Inject-BU
Sunbelt 2.2.907.0 2007.10.20 -
Symantec 10 2007.10.22 Trojan.Pandex
TheHacker 6.2.9.104 2007.10.22 -
VBA32 3.12.2.4 2007.10.22 -
VirusBuster 4.3.26:9 2007.10.22 Trojan.DR.Pandex.J
Webwasher-Gateway 6.6.1 2007.10.23 Win32.NewMalware.FS!20992!2

Additional information
File size: 19101 bytes
MD5: fdbd6575f2de80884a7f2113a04c5989
SHA1: 0349063cc8d65120a279f4badaa425317b91f9a4
Prevx info: fileinfo.prevx.com

And pretty soon afterwards the DAT updates at our site.

Patch for Adobe Acrobat, Windows XP, IE 7 users.

Earlier this month I posted about the Unpatched Acrobat PDF Backdoor and suggested a fix by disabling the mailto: option. We now have an official patch release from Adobe; with an upgrade to Adobe Reader 8.1.1.

Update available for vulnerability in versions 8.1 and earlier of Adobe Reader and Acrobat [1]
…
Summary
Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these vulnerabilities to take control of the affected system. This issue only affects customers on Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7 installed. A malicious file must be loaded in Adobe Reader or Acrobat by the end user for an attacker to exploit these vulnerabilities. It is recommended that affected users update to Adobe Reader 8.1.1 or Acrobat 8.1.1. This is an update to resolve the issue previously reported in Security Advisory APSA07-04.
…

This fixes this URI issue, but for a more complete solution we await a patch from Microsoft;

Microsoft may also be providing an update to resolve this issue at a later date. Please refer to Microsoft Security Advisory 943521 for more information. [1]

The 8.1.1 update can be downloaded from Adobe Downloads.

The update is ReaderUpd811_all_incr.msp and must be run as an Administrator, the .msp removes the “run as” option found with an exe file.

The Acrobat 8.1 clients will not see this as an update via the auto-update process (not sure why). This would be because it’s not there yet, as we are told by Kurt Foss “and soon also available from the automatic product update feature“. Hopefully it will be there soon.

UPDATE 2007-Oct-24 Now available via auto-update.

[1] Security Advisories : APSB07-18: Adobe Reader and Acrobat vulnerability (2007-Oct-22) [Adobe]
[2] Microsoft Security Advisory (943521) URL Handling Vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with Windows Internet Explorer 7 Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2007-Oct-10) [MS Technet]
[3] Adobe Reader 8.1 update available (2007-Oct-22) [SANS]

This weeks links: 2007-10-22

10 Necessary Mac Apps for the College Student
Going through the first few weeks of college, I’ve found a few apps that have made my university life so much easier. Some of these apps will be things you have heard of. Hopefully, some will be new to you. Most of the apps have been designed for a much larger audience, but greatly help college students in particular. … (2007-Sep-17)
Dustin Bachrach’s Blog

WAI!! … NEW YORK (Reuters) – J.K. Rowling has outed one of the main characters of her best-selling Harry Potter series, telling fans in New York that the wizard Albus Dumbledore, head of Hogwarts school, is gay. — [Washington Post]

How Leopard Will Improve Your Security
With the release last week of the feature list for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the security world is buzzing about some extremely important updates that should, if they work as expected, significantly improve Mac security and will make me less nervous about connecting to wireless networks in Internet cafes. …
TidBITS Safe Computing: How Leopard Will Improve Your Security [TidBITS]

OS X Leopard Guided Tour
Available from Apple as a Quicktime stream or as a download file.
Mac OS X Leopard – Guided Tour [Apple]

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