Fix Flashback Trojan on Macs

April 5, 2012 By

As reported yesterday, over 600,000 Macs are infected by a Flashback Trojan botnet. The good news is, Apple has patched Java. You can visit Apple’s Support website and download the latest update.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/

Just a little background on the Flashback Trojan botnet per ZDNet.

Flashback was initially discovered in September 2011 masquerading as a fake Adobe Flash Player installer. A month later, a variant that disables Mac OS X antivirus signatures updates was spotted in the wild.

In the past few months, Flashback has evolved to exploiting Java vulnerabilities. This means it doesn’t require any user intervention if Java has not been patched on your Mac: all you have to do is visit a malicious website, and the malware will be automatically downloaded and installed.

Another variant spotted last month asks for administrative privileges, but it does not require them. If you give it permission, it will install itself into the Applications folder where it will silently hook itself into Firefox and Safari, and launch whenever you open one of the two browsers.

If you don’t give it permission, it will install itself to the user accounts folder, where it can run in a more global manner, launching itself whenever any application is launched, but where it can also more easily detected.

As a precaution, you should probably update to the latest Java release from Apple’s website. Just choose the OS X version you are using. I have Lion or OS X 10.7.x. Download and run the package. The patch takes less than one minute to install. It’s a quick and easy fix.

Category: Apple Tags: , ,

Raspberry Pi

March 9, 2012 By

Watch out Apple, there’s another fruit in the market. Yesterday, I was ogling Apple’s TV which sells for just $99. That has to be one of the most affordable hardware sold by Apple. Except for the iPod shuffle, which sells for a mere $49. Which brings me to my main topic today, the Raspberry Pi, a full-fledged computer being sold for just $35. Did I hear that right?

The Raspberry Pi is powered by an Arm-based processor. It’s about the size of a credit card. It comes with a HDMI port, 2 USB ports for connecting keyboard and mouse, an audio output, a composite output for old-style TVs and monitors, an Ethernet port for the network, and a SD card slot for loading the operating system. It runs on just 2 watts of power, and it boots in less than 15 seconds.

The best part of it all, it runs on Linux, an open-source operating system. Since it’s open-source, you can do practically anything to it. Currently, there are 3 Linux distro images available for the Raspberry Pi. They are: Debian squeeze, Arch Linux ARM, and Fedora 14 Remix. There are many potential uses for the Raspberry Pi, such as a media center, cafe internet workstations, robotics, to name a few.

Finally, here’s a video of the Raspberry Pi. Yea, I want one or two.

YouTube Preview Image
Category: Apple, General, Linux Tags: ,

The New iPad

March 7, 2012 By

Apple announced today the release of the new iPad. Apple has made it quite clear to not call the new tablet the iPad 3 or iPad HD or by any other name. It’s just simply called the iPad. Can we call it iPad 2012?

The problem with just calling an iPad just an iPad is, it is extremely confusing for potential customers to differentiate one iPad from another. Imagine going to an online store other than Apple, and ordering an iPad. You’ll start questioning whether it’s the original iPad, the iPad 2, or the new iPad. It is confusing.

As expected, the new iPad comes with a retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 That’s a total of 3.1 million pixels, which by the way, has more resolution than the 1080p HD display. The iPad is powered by an A5X processor, with quad-core graphics, an iSight Camera with a 5-megapixel backside camera, 5-element lens, IR filter and ISP built into the processor and 1080p video recording.

It will sell for $499, $599 and $699 for the Wi-Fi-only models in 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. For iPads models with LTE 4G, the cost is $629, $729, and $829 respectively for the same capacities above.

Out of the two products revealed today, I’m more interested with Apple TV. It sells for only for $99. You can watch 1080p HD movies and TV shows directly from iTunes. You can also play Netflix, YouTube, and Vimeo videos, catch MLB, NBA, and NHL games live or on demand.

Pretty neat.

Category: Apple, General Tags: , ,

iPad 3 Coming Soon

February 13, 2012 By

Rumors has it that the iPad 3 is just a couple of weeks away from being introduced by Apple. Several sources indicate the special release date is going to be March 7. Speculations indicate that the new iPad will have these new features: a retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536, a quad-core processor, a better camera on the front as well as in the back, and finally 4G LTE networking.

Now how accurate are these rumors? Nobody really knows. But chances are that one of these features will make it on the iPad 3 is pretty good. It may not be all the features mentioned above. However, it is possible that one or two unanticipated features will surface and catch everyone by surprise.

By the looks of it, the iPad will essentially be the same size and design, but it could be slightly thicker if the bigger battery rumors are true. We’ll just have to wait several weeks if the rumors are really true.

Category: Apple, General Tags: ,

Install SSH Server on Ubuntu Desktop

September 13, 2011 By

So you just installed the latest version of Ubuntu on your desktop. You want to access your spanking new Ubuntu machine from another computer. There are two ways in accomplishing this: (1) the fast and easy way via SSH, or (2) the slightly more difficult way via graphics called Remote Desktop.

Let’s say we go with the easy route in this article. We want to access it via SSH. I’ll follow up with another article how to access your Ubuntu desktop using Remote Desktop. So, we want to access your Ubuntu desktop via SSH. What we need is a SSH server. We can easily install OpenSSH Server by just installing the SSH server from the Terminal.

Install SSH Server

$ sudo apt-get install ssh-server

Done. Simple.

SSH Client

Your remote computer must have a SSH client to access your Ubuntu desktop. I recommend that you use Putty if you are a Windows users. Putty is a SSH client program to access your Ubuntu desktop. If you are a Mac or a Linux user, you can simply use the Terminal. Access your Ubuntu server by invoking the SSH client.

# ssh 10.10.10.10

That’s the IP address of my Ubuntu desktop. You can specify a hostname if you have an internal DNS that’s working. You can also specify the username and the port number if you using a different port from the standard port 22.

# ssh 10.10.10.10 -l username -p 2222

Category: Apple, General, Linux Tags: , , ,

2011 MacBook Air: Fast and Slow SSD

July 26, 2011 By

If you are in the market for a 2011 MacBook Air, you better check the SSD (solid state devices) that comes with the laptop. Apple ships both Samsung and Toshiba SSDs. Why is Apple using two suppliers? It’s probably due to shortage of SSDs. What’s the difference between Samsung and Toshiba SSD? The difference is in speed, not by a whole lot, but it’s something to consider when making a big purchase. You want the best bang for your buck. Here the details about the speed difference from Engadget:

The 128GB Samsung SSD in his 11-inch Air was able to achieve 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds. When he switched to the 13-inch model, however, speeds dropped to 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively, using that notebook’s 128GB Toshiba SSD.

We compared speeds on two generations of 13-inch models, and confirmed Jonathan’s findings.

During our tests, the 256GB Samsung drive in our older model achieved 214 MB/s write and 251 MB/s read speeds, while the 128GB Toshiba drive in the new MacBook Air scored 184 MB/s and 203 MB/s during write and read tests, respectively.

Samsung SSD is definitely the way to go. How can you tell if you have the Samsung or Toshiba SSD? From ZDNet:

You can check which SSD module you have by going to About this Mac > More info… > System Report… (the new name for System Profiler) and clicking on Hardware > Serial-ATA in the left pane. If the enter for APPLE SSD is followed by SM, you have the Samsung, if it’s followed by TS you have the Toshiba module.

It might be preferable to buy a 2011 MacBook Air directly from an Apple Store, rather than buying it online. At the very least, you can check the SSD before making a purchase.

Category: Apple, General Tags: , ,

OS X Lion Is Now Available

July 20, 2011 By

OS X Lion is now available at Apple’s Mac App Store. The new operating system costs only $30. The filesize is roughly 3.5GB and is available for download now. There are several benefits to having OS X Lion. You can take advantage several of the many features such as: multi-touch, full screen apps, mission control, launchpad, resume, auto-save, air drop, mail, lion server and many more. If you have a slow connection, just bring your laptop to any Mac Store to download or you can purchase a OS X Lion USB stick for $70. Your better buying online if you can. Anyways, it update time. Download.

Category: Apple, General Tags: ,

Apple Now Supports Windows

June 27, 2011 By

There is now overwhelming visual evidence that Apple supports Windows.

Click here to view.

I picked up this funny piece from Digg this morning. The link was entitled “Woke up this morning and found that my wife finally found a use for the Apple Laptop.” I found out while reading the comments section that the image originally appeared on Reddit 10 days ago.

Funny. I thought that was worth a share.

Category: Apple, General Tags:

The New MacBook Air 2011

June 17, 2011 By

Apple is just about to release a newer version of the MacBook Air (sometime in July). This is the third release of the MBA. As most remember, the last MacBook Air release was back in November 2010. I bought one shortly after the release. So, what’s new with the new MacBook Air 2011 edition. Here’s the list of features:

  • MacOS X Lion
  • Thunderbolt data port
  • Intel Core i5 and i7 processors
  • New GPUs (most likely)
  • iCloud (no more MobileMe)
  • Better integration with iOS (iPhones and iPad)

Essentially, it’s a hardware refresh. Same design.

Category: Apple, General Tags: , ,

Apple Should Keep The Finder

June 10, 2011 By

I happen to like the Finder application on the MacOS. I use it a lot. There are rumors around Apple that they might drop the Finder application in exchange for an OS that is more intuitive. Working with file managers can be a daunting task, but it’s not that difficult. I can’t imagine an OS without a file manager. Every OS has their own version of a file manager. Windows has Explorer, Linux has Gnome’s Nautilus, and  the Mac has the Finder. So, Apple better not drop the Finder because it’s not intuitive enough, unless Apple has a better alternative for navigating the file system.

Category: Apple, General, Linux Tags: , , , ,