Chrome Bug Enabled Crooks to Send Malicious Code to Your Browser as PDF Files

Chrome Bug Enabled Crooks to Send Malicious Code to Your Browser as PDF Files

Jun 9, 2016 23:05 GMT  ·  By Catalin Cimpanu

Google has recently patched a high severity security bug in the Chrome browser that allowed crooks to send malicious code to your browser and take over your entire system.
The issue, tracked by the CVE-2016-1681 identifier, affects the browser's built-in PDF reader called PDFium.

Google patched the issue with the release of Chrome 51.0.2704.63, released on May 25. In the meantime, Chrome released another wave of security updates at the start of June.

Cisco discovered the issue, and Google patched it in six days
Cisco's Aleksandar Nikolic was the researcher that discovered and reported the issue to Google, who even awarded him $3,000 for his efforts.

According to the researcher's account, the issue was discovered six days earlier, on May 19, and Google's team fixed it right away.

Nikolic says that CVE-2016-1681 allowed attackers to embed a JPEG2000 image inside a PDF file, which when opened inside a vulnerable Chrome browser, would have triggered a buffer overflow that enabled the threat actor to run arbitrary code on the victim's machine.

Vulnerability was in the OpenJPEG library
The actual vulnerability was not in Chrome or PDFium, but in the OpenJPEG library that parses JPEG2000 files before being displayed inside the browser.

PDF files are so prevalent nowadays that few people think twice before opening one, either locally or on the Web. All of today's major browsers have a PDF reader already built-in, which also helps users think that opening a PDF might be safe.

"The most effective attack vector is for the threat actor to place a malicious PDF file on a website and then redirect victims to the website using either phishing emails or even malvertising," Cisco's Earl Carter wrote today in a technical write-up.

To stay safe, users should update to Google Chrome 51.0.2704.63 or higher. You can do this with the help of the built-in Chrome updater, or you can install a fresh copy of Chrome on top of your existing installation. You can get Google Chrome via Softpedia's download mirrors for Linux, Mac, and Windows users.



Read more: http://news.softpedia.com/news/chrome-bug-enabled-crooks-to-send-malicious-code-to-your-browser-as-pdf-files-505068.shtml#ixzz4BTAMzpfK



- wong chee tat :)

Google 2016 CNY

- wong chee tat :)

Singaporeans would like to work in Google, Shell: Survey

Singaporeans would like to work in Google, Shell: Survey

Singapore Airlines, Exxon Mobil and Keppel Corporation round out JobStreet.com's list of Singaporeans most preferred company to work for. Survey also reveals company reputation as main reason that candidates want to work for these companies.

SINGAPORE: Google and Shell have emerged tops in the list of companies that most Singaporeans want to work for, according to a survey by an online recruitment agency. Singapore Airlines, Exxon Mobil and Keppel Corporation rounded out the top five.

In a website post on Wednesday (Dec 24), the agency, JobStreet.com, said that according to the survey the main reason Singaporeans want to work for these companies is due to the company's reputation. Across all position levels, company reputation superseded salary as the main reason, while benefits and incentives - such as flexible working hours and work-from-home arrangements - came in second. Salary was ranked third.

Training and development came in fourth, with candidates hoping to enhance their work skills to improve their career prospects. Internal promotion and career growth, identified as important for candidates to stay and grow in a company, came in fifth.

A total of 940 employers across various industries participated in this survey held in September this year, said the online recruitment company.

- CNA

- wong chee tat :)

Singapore's CBD sees shifting mix of tenants: Jones Lang LaSalle

Singapore's CBD sees shifting mix of tenants: Jones Lang LaSalle

Tech companies such as Google and LinkedIn have been opening new offices or expanding existing ones in the city-state, Jones Lang LaSalle said in an article posted on its website.

SINGAPORE: Over the last three years, the global financial firms that dominated 60 per cent of office space in Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD) have given up 500,000 square feet (sq ft) in space. Taking their places are big names from the e-commerce, consumer products and insurance industries, according to real estate group Jones Lang LaSalle.

“Ten years ago all anyone wanted was financial houses because they saw them as a growing industry that had the ability to pay,” Mr Chris Archibold, Head of Markets for Jones Lang LaSalle in Singapore​, said. “Now any intelligent asset manager wants a bit more of a mix.”

IT: THE NEW OFFICE SPACE GRABBERS

Tech companies like Twitter, Booking.com and eBay have been opening new offices or expanding existing ones in Singapore, Jones Lang LaSalle said in an article posted on its website. PayPal has placed its international headquarters in the city, while Facebook is looking to double its space and LinkedIn is taking up the 50,000 sq ft of space vacated by Barclays.

Google has expanded six times and its Asia-Pacific headquarters now span four floors at Asia Square in Marina Bay. The building, which also houses re-insurers such as Swiss Re and SCOR, has 400 bicycle racks and showers so staff of the search engine operator can bike to work.

“You have this very bizarre dichotomy of Citibank bankers in their shiny shoes and guys in flip flops and shorts in the same elevator,” said Mr Hugh Andrew, the head of asset management for Asia Pacific at BlackRock. BlackRock owns the building via one of its funds.

LIFESTYLE A DRAW

Singapore’s pleasant lifestyle has made it a draw for companies looking to attract top talent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. For instance, cosmetics company L’Oreal moved many of its Asian operations from Shanghai to Singapore, one motive being the need to retain senior staff who demand higher standards of living and better education for their children.

Other companies which have moved to Singapore include General Motors, which moved its Asian headquarters from Shanghai, taking over 30,000 sq ft of space from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The insurer Aon is also building its Asia-Pacific hub in Singapore and toy-maker Lego is in the Marina Bay Financial Centre.

“For modern companies with young employees, they will want to know answers to questions such as ‘will I be working in a sustainable environment?’” Mr Andrew said. “Twenty years ago, people were just wondering how big their office was going to be, and if it came with a parking space?”

- CNA/cy


- wong chee tat :)

Google Licensing Hotel Booking Software

- wong chee tat :)

Google Plans to Expand Finnish Data Center

- wong chee tat :)

The Internship

- wong chee tat :)

BUSTED: Sex on Google Street View in South Australia

• Staff Writers
• news.com.au
• April 11, 2013 10:58AM

A couple were busted having sex on the side of the road by a Google Street View car.

A SOUTH Australian couple has been busted by Google Street View getting frisky on the side of the road.

But is it just a stunt?

A Reddit user found the image of the couple having sex on the boot of their car and posted it online this morning.
The dirty deed occurred on the side of Dukes Highway in South Australia, according to Google Street View.
The image depicts the couple balancing on the hood of their BMW, hamming it up for the camera as the Google Street View car drove by.
Whether they were doing the bad thing for real, we'll never know. It seemed to be a fairly short show, as the couple can be seen moving towards the left side of the vehicle as the car drives away.
Google Street View has since censored the image.
Now we'll never know if they were faking it.

The couple can be seen heading towards the left of the car, because Google probably killed the mood.

- wong chee tat :)

Australian Couple Have Fake Sex For The Google Street View Car

Australian Couple Have Fake Sex For The Google Street View Car (PICTURES)

Huffington Post UK  |  Posted: 11/04/2013 09:36 BST  |  Updated: 11/04/2013 10:05 BST

A couple in rural Australia made the most of an appearance by the Google Street View van recently by pretending to have sex for the camera.
The couple were driving on Dukes Highway in Keith, South Australia, when they apparently saw or passed the Google Maps car.
Thinking quickly they pulled to the side of the road, and made a lewd, though humourous, pose in front of their car.



We're assured by most reports that the pose was a joke - but we've blurred it for good measure. The uncensored picture can be seen here.
As the car pulls away the couple can be seen laughing and running back to their vehicle.
Needless to say the original picture has now been heavily blurred on Google Maps:

View Larger Map




- wong chee tat :)

Google Street View Captures Roadside Sex In Australia [NSFW Photos]

Posted: April 11, 2013

Folks perusing Google Street View find all sorts of strange things in random corners of the world, but how about a couple having sex on the hood of a BMW?
A Google Street View shot in what appears to be the-middle-of-nowhere Australia, a man and a woman are snapped doing the deed on the hood of their parked BMW vehicle. The woman is grimacing hilariously, and the man appears to be tipping back a beer, having a grand ol’ time.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this shot was completely staged.
Regardless, the shot made rounds online, including on the content and link sharing forum Reddit, where thousands of viewers pushed it to the front page. One user stepped forward and claimed the photo.
“That’s me and my missus,” said user benxology. “We saw the Google car on the way to Adelaide a couple of years ago.”
He continued: “I sped up, overtook the car then posed with a Corona in hand. I pinned the location in Maps to remember where it was to later check but never found it. Hilarious!”
How did he know how what a Google Maps car looks like? I turn the question to you, have you ever seen one? They’re pretty hard to mistake.

They’re about as subtle as a Batmobile. If you see one, act, because you won’t get another chance.
In any case, it’s too bad they didn’t keep up the charade for a little bit longer. After the Google Maps car passed, it caught another picture of the couple scrambling to pull their pants up and get back in the car.

This isn’t the first time the human condition in all its weirdness has been captured by a Google Maps vehicle. Previous captures have included this, from Germany:

This, from Quebec:

And this, from Manchester:

Have you ever spotted anything funny or strange on Google Maps Street View? Let me know in the comments below!

Category: Odd News
Tags : australia, google earth, google maps, google maps car, google maps couple, google maps street view, google street view, Keith, pranks, roadside sex
Posted: April 11, 2013

By Dusten Carlson

 

 

 

 

 

- wong chee tat :)

Couple Have 'Sex' On Google Street View In Australia (NSFW PHOTO)

Couple Have 'Sex' On Google Street View In Australia (NSFW PHOTO)

Posted: 04/11/2013 12:17 pm EDT

 

There are people who probably don't mean to be caught having sex for all the Internet to see, and then their are these two.
A couple in Australia seem to have seen the Google Street View cars coming and prepared for their big moment in viral infamy by having apparently fake sex on the side of the road.
Here's what Google Street View caught:



As astute readers will no doubt notice, it doesn't look like these two are actually bumping uglies down under. But the guy does appear to have a beer, so he's got that going for him (hopefully he's not the one driving).
Sometimes Google catches actual intimate acts that weren't meant to be seen, like this gentleman who was caught apparently getting manual stimulation from a sex professional.

Hat tip: Gawker




- wong chee tat :)

photobomb

Apr 10, 2013 11:57 AM 188,257 283

Couple Spots Approaching Google Street View Car; Stops By the Side of the Road to Have Sex

Neetzan Zimmerman

You're driving through South Australia along Dukes Highway, just down the road from Keith and District Motorcycle Club, when you suddenly spot the Google Street View car in the offing.
You only have a few seconds to come up with a truly great photobomb that will be immortalized by the Google Maps servers (until Google deletes it, that is).
Here's an idea: Why not park your bimmer by the side of the road, step out of the car, drop trou, and pretend to bang your significant other on the hood while downing a Corona.
Made it, Ma! Top of the world.

[H/T: Reddit via HyperVocal]



- wong chee tat :)

Google Street View snaps Australian couple 'having sex on road'

Google Street View snaps Australian couple 'having sex on road'

Agence France-Presse, April 11, 2013

 

An Australian couple shot to fame on social media Thursday after an image of them having sex by the side of a rural highway made it onto Google Street View, sparking speculation it was a stunt.The image, which has since been censored by Google, shows the couple bent over the hood of a silver sedan alongside the Dukes Highway outside the town of Keith in South Australia state.
The man has his shorts down; the woman appears to be waving to the Street View car as it passes.
A user on the social media site Reddit first posted the image, with Australian news outlets concluding the steamy scene was probably posed.
Another user, benxology, claimed the couple was "me and my missus".
We saw the Google car on the way to Adelaide a couple of years ago. I sped up, overtook the car then posed with a Corona (beer) in hand," he said.
I pinned the location in Maps to remember where it was to later check but never found it Hilarious!!"




- wong chee tat :)

Australian wins US$208k from Google for gang links

Australian wins US$208k from Google for gang links
Posted: 12 November 2012 1256 hrs
     
SYDNEY: Google was ordered to pay AU$200,000 (US$208,000) in damages to an Australian man on Monday after a jury found the Internet giant defamed him by publishing material linking him to mobsters.

Milorad Trkulja, an entertainment promoter who is now 62, was shot in the back in 2004 in a crime that was never solved.

He accused Google of defaming him with material he said implied he was a major crime figure in Melbourne and had been the target of a professional hit.

Searches of his name brought up references to the city's gangsters including crime boss Tony Mokbel and a now defunct site called "Melbourne Crime" chronicling gang-related incidents.

Google denied publication in the Supreme Court of Victoria, saying it had innocently disseminated material published by others, and also disputed that the material conveyed the defamatory implications claimed by Trkulja.

But a jury ruled in his favour, finding the Internet firm had been on notice and failed to act on the issue from October 2009, when Trkulja's lawyers wrote to them demanding action over the "grossly defamatory" content.

Judge David Beach ordered Google to pay Trkulja AU$200,000, likening their role in publication to a library or newsagent, which have "sometimes been held to be publishers for the purposes of defamation law" in Australia.

"Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article," Beach said in his judgement.

"While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation."

Beach said the jury was "entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request".

Trkulja, who argued that his reputation was central to his work and had been seriously damaged by the defamatory material, had already won AU$225,000 from Yahoo in an earlier case on the same matter.

- AFP/xq


- wong chee tat :)

Apple most popular employer among fresh grads

Apple most popular employer among fresh grads
Posted: 11 August 2011 1257 hrs
 
SINGAPORE: Apple, the maker of the iPhone and iPad, is the most popular employer among entry-level jobseekers in Singapore.

This is the second consecutive year that the technology giant clinched the top spot in the annual survey by JobsCentral.

Close to 40 per cent of the more than 3,200 local university students and graduates surveyed chose it as the company they would like to work for.

CEO of JobsCentral, Lim Der Shing, said Apple's cool factor doesn't just affect the sales of its products, but has clearly spilt over to have a positive influence on its image as an employer.

But Mr Lim added, "Just like the popular gadgets that Apple produces, it's yet to be seen whether it's a passing fad or a trend that's here to stay."

While Apple is the employer of choice overall, Google appears to appeal most to the crème de la crème among the respondents.

Among those who received or expect to graduate with a First Class Honours or Summa Cum Laude, the majority expressed that they would like to work for Google.

Last year, Google came in second in the rankings among these top students, trailing behind Apple.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) displaced Singapore Tourism Board (STB) as the top government employer.

STB has been the most popular employer in the public sector, according to the survey, for the past three years.

The survey also looked into the salary expectations of fresh graduates.

Similar to last year, most respondents picked a range between S$2,500 and S$2,999 as their expected monthly salary for their first job.

However, a greater percentage of respondents this year (33 per cent) selected the S$3,000-S$3,499 range compared to last year (27.8 per cent).

While only 15.8 per cent of the respondents expected more than S$3,500 for their first job last year, 21.9 per cent of this year's respondents expect at least S$3,500 for their first job.

- CNA/cc

- wong chee tat :)

62% of office space at Asia Square Tower 1 leased out

62% of office space at Asia Square Tower 1 leased out
By Jonathan Peeris | Posted: 28 June 2011 1837 hrs

SINGAPORE : Asia Square Tower 1, located at Shenton Way, has already leased out 62 per cent of its office space and pre-let more than half of the building.

The developers of the building, MGPA, gave the update after it was awarded its Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP) on June 21.

MGPA said it was awarded the land parcel in September 2007 and construction was completed in less than four years, making it the fastest development of this scale in Singapore to achieve completion within the time frame.

Asia Square Tower 1 comprises close to 1.3 million square feet of Grade A office space across 43 floors.

Among its future tenants are Google, Julius Baer, Lloyd's of London, Marsh & McLennan Companies and Citic Bank.

Its largest tenant, Citibank, will move in this September, with its retail branch operational by November.

Another important element of Asia Square is the food & beverage and retail space which is close to being fully leased out.

The Pure Fitness Centre will be the largest gym and fitness facility in the CBD, taking up 32,300 square feet of space, with the latest in fitness technology and training programmes.

Meanwhile, the fourth quarter of 2013 will see the completion of Asia Square Tower 2, which will add about 800,000 square feet of Grade A office space and a 305-room luxury five-star hotel under the Westin brand.

- CNA/al

- wong chee tat :)

Fix to prevent repeat of May outage of Google’s cloud to sacrifice performance

Fix to prevent repeat of May outage of Google’s cloud to sacrifice performance  

 
Company releases detailed account of the App Engine outage and explains lessons learned (6/10/2010) The team that operates App Engine, Google’s cloud-based application development platform, said its highest priority after fixing the latency problems that caused the platform to grind to a halt for more than 2.5 hours in May would be creating an alternative configuration of Datastore, the cloud database offered as part of the App Engine service that caused the outage.

“It is critical to offer an alternative configuration of the Datastore,” the team wrote in an outage post-mortem released Thursday. “This implementation should be much less susceptible to outages and will prevent any replication loss during outages, but will trade off performance.”

The incident began when Datastore started seeing increased latency caused by infrastructure instability around 12:30 p.m. on May 25. The latency resulted in write replication to the secondary data center to slow “to a crawl.” The App Engine team began the failover procedure about five minutes after the latency increase was noticed. By 1:05 p.m., read queries were being served out of the secondary data center and about 10 minutes later the team made an external announcement of the outage.

Another 10 minutes later, the secondary data center began serving both read and write traffic, however, latency is still causing a high rate of request time-outs. By 2:20 p.m. all applications, except the large ones, stabilized and by 3:10 p.m., all applications returned to a normal sate of operation.

Here’s what caused it:
A repository component of Bigtable (a distributed storage system) that determines location of entities in the distributed system became overloaded because of instability in the compute cluster. The overload prevented requests from knowing where to send Datastore operations in time to avoid read and write request time-outs, which occur 30 seconds after a request is made.

Delays in processing of Datastore requests caused other requests to stack-up beyond App Engine’s safety limit, causing all App Engine requests to fail.

Because of the outage, some writes created by the primary Datastore were not applied to the secondary Datastore during failover, “causing the mirror image between the primary and secondary Datastore to be out of sync.” Google said its team will contact all administrators whose applications were affected and instruct them to take appropriate action. The company said two percent of all applications were affected.

- wong chee tat :)

Google sees potential for mobile internet space in Asia

Google sees potential for mobile internet space in Asia
By Desmond Wong | Posted: 20 May 2010 2008 hrs

	Photos 1 of 1 The Google logo on the rooftop of the Google China headoffice building in Beijing

 
SINGAPORE: More Asians are accessing online content via their mobile phones rather than their computers and US-based Google wants a slice of the mobile internet market.

Speaking at a conference in Singapore, the internet giant said some issues will need to be addressed before the segment can take off in the region.

Mobile phone penetration is high in Asia and more users are surfing the web or checking emails on their handset.

Asians are also quick to embrace technology and Google said this is an opportunity for companies in the region to create applications and even take their business offshore.

Charles Rim, principal, Corporate Development, Google Inc, said: "In Asia, a lot of these mobile apps have developed a lot quicker than they have in the States. Mobile in the States was pretty rudimentary until about this year or last year.

“So that's an area where I think companies in Asia have an opportunity to do things in the States. We haven't seen a lot of successes yet, but I think it's a question of timing.”

Google said tech savvy economies like South Korea and Japan have a vibrant mobile internet sector.

But some parts of Asia are still lagging when it comes to pricing and infrastructure.

Google added that prohibitive prices for mobile devices and data plans will also hamper the sector's growth.

Mr Charles Rim said: "Today, with very bad speeds, if your broadband experience is still only going to be 150Kbps to 200Kbps and it's going to cost you S$100 a month, no one is going to do it.

“But the other end of the spectrum is Korean, where everyone's doing 5 Mbps and you can do all you can eat data for 40 bucks, then everyone's doing it.”

Google added that firms in emerging markets like Asia have an ace up their sleeve they can exploit.

First movers like Baidu in China are familiar to their domestic users and companies can use this familiarity to secure their gains in their home markets, thus making them much harder for foreign firms to dislodge. 

- CNA/vm 

- wong chee tat :)

Google's fast pipe to Asia almost ready

Google's fast pipe to Asia almost ready
by Tom Krazit

Google and a group of telecommunications companies are about ready to turn on a fast Internet cable running under the Pacific Ocean from the U.S. to Japan, increasing bandwidth by about 20 percent and giving Google its own connection to Asia.

The Unity Consortium, which consists of Google, Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel, has nearly completed the testing of the $300 million project. Internet users in Asia will start seeing faster Internet speeds over the next several months from the new cable, which has the potential to create a 7.68Tbps (terabits per second) connection under the Pacific.

In return for its investment--the amount of which was not disclosed--Google is entitled to 20 percent of the overall capacity for its needs, according to partners involved with the project. Google is one of the largest users of bandwidth on the planet, if not the largest, and invested in the project in 2008 to help satisfy those needs on one of the critical routes for Internet traffic.

"The need for information is a global requirement. As the economies of Asian countries continue to grow, data traffic and the use of the Internet expands. Google is a global company and is committed to providing the best quality of user experience regardless of geography," the company said in a statement Thursday.

Google is expected to formally announce the completion of the project next week.

Internet companies need bandwidth to provide their services, and usually have to rent that from the companies that build and maintain the cables and network connections. That's expensive, which is why Google and several telecommunications companies asked Pacnet to help build the cable, said Bill Barney, Pacnet's CEO. Pacnet, a telecom provider in Asia, invested $100 million in the project, with the remaining partners spreading the $200 million investment among themselves.

"Every business on the Internet today has a challenge," Barney said. "They're trying to build for the long term, and nobody knows how the Internet is going to morph."

Several years ago the U.S-Atlantic Internet routes were extremely important but Asia is poised to explode as a source of Internet traffic, and the cable systems connecting the U.S. and that continent were outdated prior to this project, Barney said. And if Internet-delivered voice and video services increase, bandwidth requirements will soar.

Google obviously wants to serve those users, its pending decision in China notwithstanding. The new cable will allow Google to make a long-term investment in providing services to Asia. "Once you buy fiber, you own it for the rest of your life. It's like launching a satellite," Barney said.

That doesn't mean Google is going to use that capacity to become an Internet service provider to Asia, a prospect it's exploring in the U.S. with its recently announced fiber-to-the-home project. But the Pacific undertaking will allow the company to link its data centers in the U.S. and Japan with one of the fastest pipes on the planet, ensuring that Google services will be delivered quickly and cheaply to Asia.

- wong chee tat :)

Introducing Google Public DNS

Introducing Google Public DNS

12/03/2009 08:35:00 AM

When you type www.wikipedia.org into your browser's address bar, you expect nothing less than to be taken to Wikipedia. Chances are you're not giving much thought to the work being done in the background by the Domain Name System, or DNS.

Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we're launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.

Most of us aren't familiar with DNS because it's often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names — e.g., www.google.com — into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers — e.g., 74.125.45.100 — that computers use to communicate with one another.

The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users' web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable. You can read about the specific technical improvements we've made in our product documentation and get installation instructions from our product website.

If you're web-savvy and comfortable with changing your network settings, check out the Google Code Blog for detailed instructions and more information on how to set up Google Public DNS on your computer or router.

As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone.

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager


- wong chee tat :)