The Department of Homeland Security is echoing Trend Micro’s advice to uninstall QuickTime if you have it on your Windows computer. While the multimedia program’s working just fine, the security firm has discovered two new critical vulnerabilities lurking within it that could allow remote attackers to take over your system. Unfortunately, they might never be patched up: Trend Micro says Apple will no longer release security updates for the Windows version of the software, hence the call to jettison it completely. The good news is that Trend Micro hasn’t spotted any active attacks targeting those specific vulnerabilities yet. But both the firm and Homeland Security stress that because Apple has abandoned the program, the only way to protect yourself from potential threats is to dump it — Windows has a lot of safer alternatives you can use anyway. These flaws don’t affect QuickTime for Mac in any way, though, so OS X users can carry on. Source: Reuters , Department of Homeland Security , Trend Micro
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Homeland Security urges you to uninstall QuickTime on Windows
How can you ensure your product design never gets knocked off? By manufacturing it with proprietary production methods and materials no one else has access to. That’s always been the government approach to making currency, which is arguably the number one thing you don’t want people knocking off. But as manufacturing techiques trickle down, and now that digital imaging has become child’s play, the design of physical currency has to continually evolve. That creates a situation essentially the opposite of what industrial design is: Currency makers have to design something that’s as complicated as possible to manufacture. This week the Federal Reserve announced that a new, redesigned $100 bill is coming out, and as you’d expect, the thing is a cornucopia of proprietary manufacturing techniques. It’s got embedded thread imprinted with “USA” and “100,” and when you hit it with a UV light the thread glows pink; it’s got the X-ray thing where a blank space on the bill reveals a hidden face (Benny Franklin) when it’s backlit; the copper-colored “100” turns green when you tilt the bill. It’s also got a “3D Security Ribbon” (that blue stripe you see) containing images of a funky bell that turns into a “100.” So where’s the 3D part? The bell/100 appear to move and shift in a 3D, holographic way while you wave the money around, as we in the Core77 offices do during our weekly dice games in the hallway with the building superintendent and the FedEx guy. (more…)