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The Crime & Investigation channel got a new face today.
I was able to be a part of the team that aided Sky’s History Channel in re-skinning the Crime & Investigation site, bringing it up to par with the History site – and then some.

We added a lot of new enhancements and features along the way. We created a new Games Hub page which will also be added to the History site at a later stage. And, needless to say, made it all that much prettier.

Crime & Investigation Channel - Home Page

Sources revealed that there is a new Worm that can affect the router or modem itself. This was a clever move by the Worm creator, as if the source is coming from a PC itself, users normally put it to sleep, or shut it down at night. Since it’s coming from the router, they can broadcast 24/7 and you would be none the wiser.

This Botnet was first discovered in Australia, Terry Baume first observed it infecting a Netcomm NB5 modem/router. The botnet binary was further analysed by members of the website DroneBL (a real-time IP tracker that scans for botnets and vulnerable machines) which came to the conclusion that the “psyb0t” or “Network Bluepill” botnet was mostly a test run to prove the technology.

The malware contains the shellcode for over 30 different Linksys models, 10 Netgear models, and a variety of other cable and DSL modems (15 different shellcodes). A list of 6000 Usernames and 13,000 Passwords were also included, to be used for brute force entry to Telnet and SSH logins which are open to the LAN and sometimes even the public WAN side of the routers. Generally, routers do not lock a user out after a number of incorrect password attempts, making brute force attacks possible. Its a good time to change your router password to something a bit stronger and hard to guess.

This type of attack will make it harder for IT specialists to track down where the cause of the issue actually lies! 99% of the time you would assume its the PC itself, so tracking is going to be a nightmare. The only way you would guess that it could be the router is that there may be a slight network performance issue. The only way to detect it would be to monitor the traffic in and out of your router.

The bot can also disable access to the control panel of the router making the only way to clear it a Factory Reset!

What’s next, Norton for routers? Scary times ahead if its not only our PC’s that can get infected!

Apple iPhone/iPod 3.0 OS is finally here, and it’s brought some exciting new features. It’s about time too. Call me a Apple fan, but I’m actually quite excited about this new release. Although, saying that, these features should have been introduced with the launch of  the first iPhone, and Apple claiming that the iPhone is 5 years ahead of everyone else is a slight exaggeration in my books. Apple do a wonderful job of making these features sound new, fresh and exciting, totally covering the fact its a bit late in the day.

Google Maps & more: For the first time, developers will be able to create software with maps embedded into it with relative ease. This API will provide the tools, but developers will have to supply their own maps; they won’t be able to use the proprietary ones that are part of Google Maps.

In addition, Apple will start allowing developers to access the iPhone‘s location information to create navigation software with turn-by-turn directions. Bring on TomTom, or Garmin.

Peer-to-Peer Connectivity: This will allow two iPhone‘s or iPod touches to connect to each other over Bluetooth to play head-to-head games. Thanks to this upcoming feature, two devices that are near each other and are both running the same game will automatically seek each other out. While gaming is the most obvious use for this, Apple promised there would be others.

In-App-Purchase: This will allow companies to sell items from within applications. On-device e-book stores is one example, but developers will also be able to sell additional levels for their games. Naturally, this will still be tied to the iTunes App Store, and Apple will get 30% of the revenue.

Cut, Copy & Paste (Finally): Confirming the earlier rumors, iPhone 3.0 will – finally – allow iPhone users to cut & paste and copy & paste. Naturally, the process for selecting text will take advantage of this device’s multi-touch screen. This feature will be available in Apple‘s own software and third-party apps.
And it extends to more than just text. Users will be able to copy images and paste them into an email. You can also Cut, Copy & Paste between different apps, so from Safari to Mail for instance.

MMS, A2DP & more: iPhone 3.0 will also mark the arrival of other features long available in the iPhone‘s competitors, including MMS messaging, Stereo Bluetooth, device search, and voice memos. This should mean you can use already created hands free kits, or bluetooth music devices.
In addition, landscape support is being added to more of the bundled applications.
Apple is also going to release a new SDK (software developer kit) for handling streaming audio and video, including HDTV streaming.

A few other features that speak for themselves:

Forwarding of SMS
Search functionality in all applications like mail and even on an Exchange Server
Spotlight home screen with search
Notes Sync
Whole new set of API’s
New api for streaming video and audio
Use your iPhone to remotely control accessories
CalDAV Support
Updated Stocks app (Streaming news headlines, highs, lows, and PEs. Also a landscape mode)
Shake to Shuffle (iPod Nano feature)
Wifi Auto login
LDAP
iTunes account creation
YouTube ratings
Anti-Phishing
Call Log
Parental Controls
Media Scrubber
OTA Profiles
VPD on Demand
Languages
YouTube Subscriptions
YouTube Accounts
Encrypted Profiles
Tethering
Send/Receive files between devices

You can watch the Apple presentations of the new iPhone 3.o release here.

Thanks to Brighthand.com for some of the information.

The next installment of Microsoft Office may ship for FREE! Office 14 would be a free ad supported version, this could be ad’s to buy the bigger better version of Office, or maybe something along the lines of Google ads. Microsoft Business Division Chief Stephen Elop announced “There’s an opportunity to draw those pirate customers into the revenue stream. We want to draw them into the Windows family and maybe there’s an upsell opportunity later”. There could be a few reasons for this move.

1. Rival any other free alternatives such as OpenOffice.
2. Rival Piracy, by providing it free you take away the need to download it illegally and spend time cracking it.

You also have to wonder what the free version will be missing from the full paid for version, besides the ads.

Good news for IT Managers around the world, its rumoured that Office 14 will still support XP, and it definitely will support the new Windows 7.

Microsoft have released an update to IE7 where hackers could gain access to your computer, to steal your passwords and personal details. IT Managers are increasing their security rapidly.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the “underlying vulnerability” was present in all versions of the browser. Would this be a good time to switch to the ever increasing Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome? And does this especially mean the end to supporting IE6?

“Based on our investigation, setting the internet zone security setting to High will protect users from known attacks,” advised Microsoft.

However, for the most effective protection, customers should evaluate a combination of using the High security setting in conjunction with one of the following workarounds:

- Disable XML Island functionality
- Restrict Internet Explorer from using OLEDB32.dll with an Integrity Level ACL
- Disable Row Position functionality of OLEDB32.dll
- Unregister OLEDB32.dll
- Use ACL to disable OLEDB32.dll