By Matthew Broersma - ZDNet.co.uk
Posted on ZDNet News

The Mozilla Foundation is planning to end support for the Firefox 2 browser in mid-December, despite the persistence of significant flaws in the most-recent version of the popular browser.

The 'end of life' (EOL) plan for Firefox 2 is part of Mozilla's policy of ending support for previous versions of a product six months after a new version's release. It is designed to allow Mozilla developers to focus their efforts on the current browser version, Firefox 3, released in mid-May.

For users, the policy means an end to security and stability updates for the existing versions, as well as an end to releases of new features.

Support will also cease for the Gecko 1.8 layout engine that underlies both Firefox 2 and the Thunderbird 2 email client. The move will affect a range of third-party Gecko-based browsers, such as SeaMonkey, the Mac-only Camino and the Unix/Linux browser Galeon.

Mozilla confirmed the move on the web page devoted to older versions of its software, stating: "Firefox 2.0.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until mid-December, 2008. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3."

Read the full article on Mozilla to end support for Firefox 2

From ZDNet Blogs
The first security patch for Google’s new Chrome browser is out, fixing at least two “critical” vulnerabilities that put Windows users at risk of code execution attacks.

The patch, which is rolled out automatically via Chrome’s auto-update feature, also addresses two additional security vulnerabilities — the carpet-bombing issue and a denial-of-service flaw that could lead to browser crashes and data loss.

Read entire article about Google patches *critical* Chrome code execution flaws

The bottom line - is text based CAPTCHA dead? It’s definitely in pain thanks to evil marketers recruiting low-waged Indian data processing workers, who according to some of the statistics obtained, earn over ten times more while solving CAPTCHAs, than through their legitimate data processing jobs.

How serious is the CAPTCHA solving business in India? The following Indian advertisements of their CAPTCHA services clearly speak for themselves - business is good and they are in fact competing for projects :
    * 24/7 support still like. We have 30 pc 90 worker & we have 300 captcha team. Your any captcha project we done quickly. We have high experience captcha worker
    * Sir, We have 10 systems with good typing skill workers. We can easily do 25k per day
    * I have 40 PCs and 55 Persons working in my office for data entry work. As 1 person can do 800 captcha entry per hour. We can deliver you good quantity with quality
    * Hello Sir, I will kindly introduce myself.. This is shivakumar.. we have a team to type capcthas 24/7 and we can type more than 200k captchas per day
    * WE ARE PROFESSIONAL CAPCHA ENTRY OPEATORS AND WE CAN DO EVEN 25000 ENTRIES PER DAY AS MY COMPANY IS A 25 SEATER FIRM SPEALISED IN DATA ENTRY
    * Our Team is very much interested in your project and we could easily handle more than 50,000 captcha entries per day
    * We having more then 10 teams,we are operating 24/7 data entry works and delivering 700k/day captchas daily
    * I have a team of 7 people, willing to do captchas at $2 per 1000 entries. Please consider my bid. We can definitely provide 50K captchas per day
    * I have 40 PCs and 55 Persons working in my office for data entry work. As 1 person can do 800 captcha entry per hour. We can deliver you good quantity with quality
    * My team is equipped to offer the services. 20 person team, T1 business speed internet with an on hand technical staff. We are able to start right away
    * Dear Sir I am an expert in account creation, will provide you the accounts as per your requirements.I ensure the guaranteed satisfaction always. I charge only $40/1000
    * captcha typing teams for 24/7 ready. Rate $1.25 for 1K, up to 100K captchas per day
    * 1$ per 1K of entries, and ready to produce 50 K entries per day. Kindly look forward procedures to provide the chance to us
    * My rate $4.00 per 1k My team can work 24/7. They are jobless now
    * $3 per 1000 image entry, Ready start. 24/7 service like also. We have 30 pc 90 worker & 39 big captcha team so your any target we solve
    * Dear Sir, We have quoted 50 $ per 50000 entries., Kindly look forward procedures to provide a chance to work with you

Read entire article

Google confirmed that Chrome will launch on Tuesday in a beta that will cover 100 countries.
Google said on its blog:

     All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

     On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Read the entire article

nb1 writes:  

Bits and pieces of Google's acquisition of FeedBurner continue to seep out. Friday marked the quiet "public" launch of AdSense for Feeds, a service that was soft-launched to a small group of AdSense users back in May.

Once integrated into publishers' RSS feeds, it'll serve up contextually-related advertising based around the content, helping publishers make money off the growing number of users accessing their site through RSS readers instead of the site where page and ad views have been factors in revenue. For users who did not have access to the AdSense for Feeds menu in Google's AdSense, it's a pretty straightforward setup.

Publishers can set ad frequency, placement, and have it only add them on content that's over a certain size. It also employs the same "channels" tool that lets you later track ad campaigns on certain sections of your site. Google Blogoscoped's Ionut Alex Chitu notes this release comes just a few weeks after the closure of FeedBurner's in-house ad publishing network, meaning all new publishers will need to through AdSense to be included in in-feed advertisements.


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From ZD Net

Showing you just how much they understand about security, McAfee blocked the SANS website, sans.org, as well as giac.org and sans.edu, with their SiteAdvisor application, listing it as a “bad” site.

Interestingly enough, SANS sites are some of the best sites to go to for security related news.  Several people count on SANS for training on many security topics, and SANS also hosts one of my favorite websites, the Internet Storm Center Handler’s Diary.  This site catalogs the daily events of Incident Handlers and provides intuitive thoughts on new attacks and how to deal with them.

Of course, I was not surprised when I browsed to their site today and saw that it was flagged by SiteAdvisor… it’s not the first time they’ve shown us just how useful their tools are.

Read the entire article