Microsoft Patch Comes With Seven Security Updates

The February Patch released on Tuesday gave Windows users seven security updates to check more vulnerabilities in Microsoft software. Microsoft plugs security holes in various Windows operating systems.

From the original five announced update packages Microsoft has made it to seven. The two additional software patches to repair leaks in Internet Explorer and in the scripting language “VBScript “. Both of those leaks are classified as critical one by Microsoft. They all relate to versions of Windows (including server variants), the security software Forefront Protection 2014 for Exchange and the runtime NET Framework.

By the way the 8th April is nearing and the support for Windows XP is running out. The patch MS14 -010 resolves a publicly and 23 privately reported vulnerabilities in Windows. The most severe vulnerability allows remote code execution (attack from afar), if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer the successful attacker will gains entry under with the same user rights as the current user.

For users whose accounts are configured to have fewer privileges, have the less impacted than users who operate with administrative privileges. The Microsoft patch day is normally on the second Tuesday of each month instead - the next Patch Tuesday will be on 11 Of March 2014.

The security updates install automatically with the appropriate active Internet connection. With this month’s Patch Microsoft brings out a fresh version of its "tools for removing malicious software".

‘Normandy’ Nokia's First Android Smartphone

Nokia will show its first Android phone Normandy at Mobile World Congress, according to The Wall Street Journal. It will be the part of the low-end and will feature a modified version of Android. The rumored Nokia phone based on Android will be released at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, according to sources consulted by The Wall Street Journal.

It discloses more and said that Nokia's decision to market an Android based device is purely due to technical reasons such as the Microsoft operating system is not yet adapted to the low-end terminals. Thus, we can expect this Smartphone code named as Normandy comes with a very ambitious spec sheet, as pointed out.

Chinese Weibo website revealed the screen shots of the 4 inch Smartphone with a 5 megapixel camera, with a Qualcomm processor that can support two Sim cards. According to The Wall Street Journal, it will have the services provided by Nokia and Microsoft, as the application of streaming music and navigation MixRadio etc, as well as Nokia's application store.

 The information published by The Wall Street Journal gives greater credibility to the voices that say the Finnish firm goes ahead with the development of a terminal with Android. A project in which the company has been working since before Microsoft acquired the devices and services division of the company for more than 5,400 million Euros last September.

Cloudflare Announces Massive DDoS Attack

The network security provider Cloudflare has reported last night about a massive DDoS attack on one of its customers. That was a NTP Reflection attack, which should be greater than the attack happened in 2013. It was tweeted By Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. The attack on one of its customers was carried out with up to 400 gigabits per second on 11th Feb 2014, tweeted Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on the night of 11 February 2014.

He was thus greater than that on the Swiss company Spamhaus in March 2013, the Cloudflare, estimated this attack and described this as the most recent attack on the Internet. This time, the attackers did not use a DNS server, but used a so called NTP Reflection attack, which is done via the timer log. Cloudflare is known for its rigid formulations. Prince compared the DDoS attack on Spamhaus with a nuclear attack in his blog, which affected the whole Internet.

At peak times it was run around 2.5 terabits of data through the Internet nodes. The security company Cloudflare does not tell so far which customer is affected by the current attack . However, reported at least one major French provider was the victim of this DDoS attack. OVH - founder and owner Oles tweeted that the attack was carried out with up to 350 Gbps.

The reason behind the DDoS attack is not ascertain so far. A Reflective attack on NTP is a fairly new procedure to bog down networks. Instead of DNS server now a days NTP server is used on the Internet for such attacks. These servers provide detailed time information worldwide. The attackers use fake data packets and put it in the IP address of the victim as a source.

The NTP servers in turn respond automatically and send data back to the real IP address. First, the attacker can successfully hide. Attackers can also send small fake data packets to the server and get them to respond with large packets. This can be achieved with a small bandwidth and in turn the attack use wide bandwidth of the victim.

Scientists Can Overhear On Bacterial Communication Now!

Researchers from New York have developed a chip with which they are able to observe the communication of a colony of micro organism. The chip itself can also check the growth of the colony. Ken Shepard and Lars Dietrich know are the two researchers from Columbia University in New York City; who has developed a chip that allows them to spy on their communication.

Specifically, the researchers eavesdrop on the bacteria type Pseudomonas aeruginosa and watching them with a CMOS chip. The chip is a glass slide on which the bacterial colony is located. This is an electrochemical sensing device integrated channels with electrodes and potentiometer to infer the data. Thus, the signals of their communication of the colonies of bacteria are detected and gathered in real time. Cells mediate their activity by secreting some chemicals.

The New York researchers focused primarily on those phenazines and these are metabolites that control gene expression. Their study revealed that bacterial colonies produced Phenazines, which probably contributes to the shape of the colony, says Dietrich. This is an important finding in this field. Destroy hearing and In her essay in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers not only describe s how we can listen to the chip and how we can use the chip to interpret the discussion of the micro organic colonies.


Hence this chip is not only in research use, but could be integrated into medical devices because of their anti bacterial effect, especially in those in which frequently used such as catheters and others.

A robot spider that moves on its own thread!

A group of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, has developed a robot spider capable of moving in a vacuum vertically along a solid wire that fabricated from a thermoplastic adhesive. Such robots could be used for extraterrestrial exploration adapting to changing terrain. LiYu Wang, a member of the team, told in detail. The spider robot developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich moves vertically along a solid wire. It manufactures thereof at progressively from thermoplastic adhesive sticks which is heated and stretched. It can carry payloads up to 10.9 kg in its current configuration.

A team of researchers from Bio -Inspired Robotics Laboratory (BIRL) has unveiled this robot spider that produces itself a plastic wire which he uses to travel into space, vertical. In their scientific article published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, they explain that the interest of this innovation is that it can be used to develop hybrid robots to land and air time capable of carrying payloads. Another advantage of the system is that the robot adapts the thickness of the wire according to the weight it carries.

The technical challenge with which the team had to deal BIRL was to ensure that the robot makes its wire while moving with only physical support of wire itself. It was therefore necessary to develop an autonomous system capable of producing the wire associated with a mechanism for moving and guiding. The robot weighs 185 grams to 18 cm tall, 5 wide and 3 thick. “The mechanical part includes mechanisms extrusion and pultrusion," says LiYu Wang, one of the researchers involved in the project , which is also a member of the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology). The technology uses the thermoplastic glue stick, the same as we use for other jobs.

The adhesive is heated to between 65 and 75 ° C to be extruded through a nozzle into a process similar to the spider secretion produced by the ampullary gland. A second phase: glue spots pultrusion be spun stretching and solidify upon contact with air according to Newton's law of thermodynamics. The robot is operated by two motors. The first serves to urge the glue stick through the heating system and the nozzle on a linear axis via a ball screw system. The second motor mechanism actuates the “deformation - locomotion”, which consists of two wheels of 12 mm diameter which will both stretch the wire while sliding the robot progressively. Everything is powered by two lithium -ion batteries.

In its current configuration, the robot can carry a maximum load of 10.9 kg moving at 12 inches per minute. The robot that spins a web like a spider "The advantage of this technology lies in its flexibility, which allows you to adjust the thickness of the wire so that the robot can adapt to different loads while remaining self-sufficient," says Wang LiYu. He also confirmed that the system could be replicated on larger robots by adapting the configuration of extrusion pultrusion accordingly. The next step for the team is to replace BIRL wheels legs, so that the robot can move on a solid surface, but also to switch over to another, like a spider on its web. The researchers believe that the solution would be to create legs inspired by the gecko with adhesive pads for grip. With this, the robot could then weave a fabric by forming vertical and horizontal on which it may then travel.