Romanian websites for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal, and other operators were briefly redirected to a rogue server on Wednesday. The redirect is most likely a result of a decade-old hacking technique that underscores the fragility of the Internet’s routing system.
For a span of one to several hours on Wednesday morning, people typing Google.ro, Yahoo.ro, and Romanian-specific addresses for other sites connected to a website that was purportedly run by an Algerian hacker, according to numerous security blog posts, including this one from Kaspersky Lab. Researchers said the most likely explanation for the redirection is a technique known as DNS poisoning, in which domain name system routing tables are tampered with, causing domain names to resolve to incorrect IP addresses.
DNS poisoning first came to light in the mid-1990s when researchers discovered that attackers could inject spoofed IP addresses into the DNS resolvers belonging to Internet service providers and large organizations. The servers would store the incorrect information for hours or days at a time, allowing the attack to send large numbers of end users to websites that install malware or masquerade as banks or other trusted destinations. Over the years, DNS server software has been updated to make it more resistant to the hack, most recently in 2008, when numerous providers introduced fixes to patch a DNS cache poisoning vulnerability discovered by researcher Dan Kaminsky.
At Google I/O Wednesday, Google took the wraps off of Google Q, a mysterious, spherical, Android-powered computer for home entertainment and software designed by Google from the ground up. It doesn’t stream media from another local device like Apple’s AirPlay. All its content comes from the Google Play cloud.
It plugs into the best speakers and TVs out there using optical outputs. It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC for connectivity, as well as USB ports “to encourage general hackability.”
Nexus Q allows for social streaming of music. Friends can add their own music from Google Music to the device, so anyone in the room can DJ the party straight from their phones. The Nexus Q will be available for pre-order on Wednesday for $299, starting in the U.S.
According to BuzzFeed the Washington Post social reader for Facebook has proven to be a miserable failure. Apparently the failure is not limited to Washington Post as many top brand news sources that have a social reader for Facebook are also seeing their subscriptions plummet this year.
This is a disaster for WaPo, but they were always an odd fit for Facebook autosharing anyway. How’s everyone else doing? Not so well, apparently. This week’s loser list on AppData.com is full of social reader apps:
This is an interesting predicament though I can’t help but wonder if their numbers aren’t dwindling because there are that many people shutting down their Facebook accounts after so much controversy over the privacy issues they’re having to deal with now.
I shut down my Facebook account two months ago. Not because of privacy issues but because I just don’t find the service all that useful. Of course I was never one of the power users that had thousands of friends on Facebook. I kept a close knit group of actual friends which was under 100. I have no problem ditching that service and moving over to Google+ because I figure anyone that is really a friend still will also find me here on Google+.
A little known secret is that I’m a staunch Microsoft fan. That’s not to say that I have tunnel vision when it comes to the technology industry. I know there are other big players in today’s market and I don’t discount any of them but I’ve been developing Windows software for over 15 years now and so I have my reasons to be in the Microsoft camp, not the least of which is that I’ve seen them slowly roll over, mow down and out spend every competitor that has come up against them so although they may be ruthless to some degree, I’ve also witnessed how much they do for their own community.
Honestly, I can’t think of any other billion dollar company in corporate America today that has done more for others (while helping themselves obviously) than Microsoft. It’s this sense of community that makes Microsoft a company you can get behind. I also see this same strategy being employed by Google which gives me the sense that they are one of a kind even if they compete with each other to some degree they really have very different beginnings and their ecosystems are slightly offset.
Microsoft has always been and continues to be the king of desktop operating systems while Google has now claimed it’s roll as the center of the Internet for information and now social media with their Google+ service. Also, on a side note, I think it’s appropriate that Regina Dugan has joined the Google team. In case you missed this news, Regina Dugan is the former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which is the agency responsible for the Internet technology we not only enjoy but upon which we are dependent. Although she only served as the director of DARPA for three years, it’s obvious she must’ve have seen something in the future of Google to give up her position as the director. Perhaps it was just a bigger paycheck, but still you don’t spend all those years in the defense industry to move to the directorship of the nation’s leading research agency in defense and then move on without a good reason.
From what little I know about Regina I believe the reason must’ve have been her interest in robotics (which by the way is also an interest of mine). Have you heard about this “self-driving” car project Google started in 2010. The plan is to create a car which can navigates street on it’s own (ala Demolition Man or Minority Report) in order to make the streets safer and cut down on traffic accidents. You won’t hear something like that coming out of Apple. (Sorry I couldn’t resist that dig). Anyway, here’s the latest from Google on their self-driving car project. This video was just posted March, 2012.
So, back to my point which was simply that I ran across this article on the Internet which highlights the big win for Microsoft in the mobile market with the first time a phone Window Mobile phone has been universally accepted by reviewers with few if any complaints. That’s according to the author though I’m pretty sure the AT&T Title was very popular in it’s day about five years ago. What phone was that anyway? Well it is the highly anticipated Nokia Lumia 900. That’s great news for all of us Windows developers waiting to get back in the driver’s seat! If you’re interested in reading more about the reviews of the new Windows Mobile phone you can read about it on Paul Thurrot’s Supersite for Windows, “WinInfo Short Takes, April 6, 2012“.
The reason I was so excited to read this was aside from confirming my suspicion that Microsoft is going to be coming out of the gates in the next few years, I found a great new resource for a pro-Microsoft journalist. I’m getting a headache listening to everyone talk about how profitable Apple is, and not being able to say anything about it. Of course those of us who are developers and actually understand the technology and the market, know that Apple’s days are numbered. So in closing I just wanted to refer you to this great site I found for qualified Microsoft news and information. Click here for Paul Thurrott’s Supersite.
I just read about this so I’m sorry to say I can’t give you all the details right now but I’m so excited about it I had to post it before I forget about!
I’ve been developer desktop applications (including video games) for over 15 years now and I was excited about Microsoft giving independent and amateur game developers a real chance to develop titles for the XBox 360 with their XNA Game Development kit. I’m still working on this but as I’ve taken a recent job working for a web design company I’ve been thrilled with the rate at which Google+ has been gaining popularity. Well this just takes the cake now that they’re opening the doors for real native and hardware accelerated games which should allow game developers to create games of the same caliber as PC desktop games with their Native Client API for Google+.
I just saw one example of this new game development interface with the title, “GT Racing: Motor Academy”.
This is a very interesting thread on the future of Apple in one of the fasting growing mobile phone markets (still) in the world. If I may quote myself here as saying the following,
I hate to beat a dead horse here, but I also have to point out that Apple is in last place when it comes to “Cloud” technologies which is another upcoming technology that should spur on innovation in mobile phone software development.
I think the investors today don’t understand how critical software development is to any hardware platform these days. Google is far superior to Apple when it comes to fostering the development community for so many reasons, not the least of which is the barrier to entry. The cost to develop for Google which includes the Google Marketplace, Google Apps and Android is practically zero.
Web Log 2012 