Main/News >> News Archives > The week of July 29 (2007) (you
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Brazilian e-cards from hell
 dwergs says ( 04 Aug 2007 ):
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I received so many e-cards lately I almost felt popular. Turns out it's a worm with Brazilian roots that spams the victims' Messenger contacts via e-mails with subjects like "You've received a postcard from [...]" (or "Voce recebeu um cartao do UOL!" in Portuguese). When triggered, the W32.Imcontactspam worm minimizes Windows Live Messenger and displays a fake login screen. Of course it logs the entered username and password, then shows the real Messenger login window where the clueless victim has to enter his or her credentials again. Finally, it steals all its contact addresses and sends all collected data to the worm's authors.
The fake Windows Live Messenger login screen is actually embedded in the executable as a JPG and can easily be exposed when the infected user, for instance, clicks the File menu which then results in an unusual error message.
Symantec's Liam OMurchu saw so many similarities between this worm and the infamous Infostealer.Bancos trojans, that he suspects it has been created by the same Brazilian malware gang now targeting more than just banking sites. For OMurchu's complete analysis and screenshots of the worm, check out the Security Response Weblog.
>> Read Symantec's technical details of W32.Imcontactspam@mm. |
Mr. Tengu, an emotional USB-gadget
 dwergs says ( 03 Aug 2007 ):
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I'm a sucker for gadgets and anything related to emoticons, and Mr. Tengu just so happens combines both. The USB-powered Tengu has seven different expressions which appear in reaction to sound. If you speak or sing into its built-in microphone, its face will try to lip-sync. If it's as quiet in your room as it is in Homer Simpson's cranium, Tengu will fall asleep. Just breath into it it wake Tengu up again.
My suggested next step for designer Crispin Jones is to make it connectable to Windows Live Messenger so it would adapt to received emoticons, a bit like Availabot does for IM statuses.
Manufacturer Solid Alliance will start selling these end of August and only in Japan at 4480 Yen (under US$40), so here's hoping I'll find one on eBay.
>> Check out the Tengu choir and other product images here.
>> Read the Mr. Tengu press release (translated).
[Via: The Raw Feed]
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Web2Messenger invitation hunting season continued
 dwergs says ( 03 Aug 2007 ):
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You know the drill and the drill knows you!
#26, #27, #28,... UPDATE: They've all been used. If you have spare invites, send them over and we'll post them here.
For more info, look at the posts below. |
Web2Messenger invitation hunting season opened
 dwergs says ( 02 Aug 2007 ):
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I just posted about Web2Messenger (see below) and guess what I found in my inbox? Fifty unused W2M invitations from "Someone". Here's half of them 25 and as with many things in life: first come first served!
#1, #2, #3,... UPDATE: All used up.
Twenty-five more in a couple of hours. Watch this space! |
Web2Messenger back and ready for more users
 dwergs says ( 02 Aug 2007 ):
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After countless months of absence and then a slightly laborious relaunch two weeks ago, Web2Messenger coding-monkey TheBlasphemer yesterday excitedly confirmed the stability of the free service that allows webmasters to receive instant messages straight from their visitors, and link their forum signature to live Windows Live Messenger data.
They've also added 14 new accounts to their army of bots, so there's room for 9500 extra users. Keep eyes and ears open if you fancy an account!
>> Our first post on Web2Messenger (has it really been that long?) |
Microsoft blocks .info completely: addendum
 dwergs says ( 01 Aug 2007 ):
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Alas, no word nor action yet from Microsoft regarding Messenger's negative discrimination of all .info-domains that we reported on Saturday. So Messer ^Paradox tipped us off on how to get round the filter and succesfully send your hyperlinks to .info websites through Messenger anyway. Just replace .info with .%69nfo.
For instance: http://www.flashback.%69nfo.
This proves once again how useless the filter really is. And it's just a matter of time until worm creators and shady website owners adapt to the circumstances.
Messer Daleus also reported that Pidgin 2 is doing an okay job by at least returning "Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred" when a "forbidden IM" has been blocked. |
Meebo's growing fastest. O RLY?
 dwergs says ( 01 Aug 2007 ):
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Last week leading Internet media and market researcher, Nielsen//NetRatings, issued a press release claiming Meebo is the "fastest growing instant messaging destination in the last 10 months". And because I've seen many sites plainly repeating this finding, I can't resist to comment that the se results are based on panel-research within the U.S. That's why the (assumedly) equally popular eBuddy service is nowhere to be seen in the top five. For now, eBuddy's founders are restraining themselves from commenting on the conclusion but I'm sure they're as annoyed as me with the attention drawn by NNR's "limited" research.
Now let's look at some actual numbers. Meebo's unique audience has increased 354 percent from 434,000 users last summer to 2 million in June 2007. Other top fivers are Google Talk (from about 900k to an unremarkable 2.3m users) and Skype (less than half a million new accounts over the past year). Are these figures really as impressive as Windows Live Messenger's growth from 240 million active accounts in June 2006 to nearly 260 million right now? I doubt any other IM service has seen an increase of almost twenty million in 12 months. Yes, Meebo will have to "grow" quite a bit "faster" to become as popular.
Don't get me wrong: I love Meebo and it's my prefered web-based IM service. Neither do I think myself a trained statistician worthy of criticizing the work of Nielsen//NetRatings. I just think the conclusion of this particular research gives a distorted representation of the current instant messaging market.
>> Read Nielsen//NetRatings's press release.
PS: While writing this, I noticed that eBuddy is searching for rare and exotic phone owners to test their neat mobile app. |
Pidgin 2.1.0 gets partial makeover
 dwergs says ( 30 Jul 2007 ):
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Although the just released Pidgin 2.1.0 sorts out quite a few bugs (no less than 150 tickets were closed), it are the UI changes that attract most attention. Particularly the conversation window has been thoroughly redesigned, with the reorganisation of the formatting toolbar and a new area showing contact details such as avatars and status messages. Other extra features include an "undo" option in conversation windows, and idle times (days/hours/seconds) in the buddy list.
>> Download Pidgin 2.1.0, the multi-protocol IM client for Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems, here.
>> Want to know more about Pidgin? Then read Rolando's review of v2.0.1.
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