Perl.com Domain Stolen, Now Using IP Address of Past Malware Campaigns

“The domain name perl.com was stolen and now points to an IP address associated with malware campaigns,” reports Bleeping Computer: Perl.com is a site owned by Tom Christiansen and has been used since 1997 to post news and articles about the Perl programming language. On January 27th, Perl programming author and Perl.com editor brian d foy tweeted that the perl.com domain…

Your photos of Venus, as it descends into the dawn

Have you seen bright Venus recently, in the east before dawn? It’s getting very near the sunrise glare. As January progresses, watch for Venus to sink deeper and deeper into the morning twilight. Your photos, as we say farewell to Venus, here. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photos-venus-disappear-into-dawn-jan-feb-2021…

Firefox To Ship ‘Network Partitioning’ As a New Anti-Tracking Defense

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Firefox 85, scheduled to be released next month, in January 2021, will ship with a feature named Network Partitioning as a new form of anti-tracking protection. The feature is based on “Client-Side Storage Partitioning,” a new standard currently being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Privacy Community Group. “Network Partitioning is highly…

On Older Versions of Android, Many Let’s Encrypt-Secured Sites May Stop Working in 2021

This year Let’s Encrypt announced that it’s issued a billion certificates, and it’s been estimated they’ve made certs for almost 30% of web domains. But Friday they posted that “The DST Root X3 root certificate that we relied on to get us off the ground is going to expire — on September 1, 2021. Fortunately, we’re ready to stand on our…

Chrome Changes How Its Cache System Works To Improve Privacy

Google has changed how a core component of the Chrome browser works in order to add additional privacy protections for its users. From a report: Known as the HTTP Cache or the Shared Cache, this Chrome component works by saving copies of resources loaded on a web page, such as images, CSS files, and JavaScript files. The idea is that when…

Chrome 86 Will Warn Users About Insecure Forms On HTTPS Pages

While there’s wide HTTPS adoption today, HTTP content on secure pages still persists. Google has been working to stamp that out, and Chrome is now turning its attention to and warning about insecure forms. “These ‘mixed forms’ (forms on HTTPS sites that do not submit on HTTPS) are a risk to users’ security and privacy,” says Google in a blog post….

Researcher Discovers New ‘HTTP Request Smuggling Attack’ Variants

Some scary new variants of “HTTP request smuggling” have been discovered by Amit Klein, VP of security research at SafeBreach, reports Security Week:
Specifically, an HTTP request smuggling attack, which can be launched remotely over the internet, can allow a hacker to bypass security controls, gain access to sensitive data, and compromise other users of the targeted app. While the attack method…

Mars landings: ‘7 minutes of terror’

To celebrate the 8-year anniversary of Curiosity rover’s arrival on Mars, here’s a video on the final 7 minutes of its chilling descent on August 5-6, 2012. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mars-curiosity-rovers-seven-minutes-of-terror…

Safari 14 Removes Flash, Gets Support for Breach Alerts, HTTP/3, and WebP

Safari 14, scheduled to be released later this fall with iOS 14 and macOS 11, is a release that is packed choke-full with features. From a report: The biggest and most important of the new additions is support for WebExtensions, a technology for creating browser extensions. What this means for Safari users is that starting this fall, they’ll see a huge…

Before 2020 ends, a great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

These great Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions happen only every 20 years. The last one was in the year 2000. Their upcoming conjunction – December 21, 2020 – will be their closest since 1623. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020…