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21/01/2014

Spammers buy Chrome extensions and turn them into adware.

IDG News Service - Changes in Google Chrome extension ownership can expose thousands of users to aggressive advertising and possibly other threats, two extension developers have recently discovered.

At least two Chrome extensions recently sold by their original developers were updated to inject ads and affiliate links into legitimate websites opened in users' browsers.

The issue first came to light last week when the developer of the "Add to Feedly" extension, a technology blogger named Amit Agarwal, reported that after selling his extension late last year to a third-party, it got transformed into adware. The extension had over 30,000 users when it was sold.

A second developer, Roman Skabichevsky, confirmed Monday that his Chrome extension called "Tweet This Page" suffered a similar fate after he sold it at the end of November.

Skabichevsky accepted an offer to sell the simple extension for $500 because he didn't have time to improve it anymore.

"A woman named Amanda who contacted me said they wanted the extension 'for further development'," Skabichevsky said via email. It was weird because the extension's code is open sourced so anyone can work on it, "but I sold it anyway, thinking it would be better for the world. I was so wrong!"

Agarwal's story is similar. He sold his extension for a four-figure sum after being contacted by a woman.

"A month later, the new owners of the Feedly extension pushed an update to the Chrome store," he said Thursday in a blog post. "No, the update didn't bring any new features to the table nor contained any bug fixes. Instead, they incorporated advertising into the extension."

"These aren't regular banner ads that you see on web pages, these are invisible ads that work the background and replace links on every website that you visit into affiliate links," Agarwal said. "In simple English, if the extension is activated in Chrome, it will inject adware into all web pages."

Converting a trusted and popular extension into an aggressive advertising tool is more efficient for adware pushers than creating an extension from scratch and building a large user base they can later target, because it brings a quicker and most likely bigger return on investment.

The "Add to Feedly" and "Tweet This Page" extensions have been removed from the Chrome Web Store this weekend, supposedly by Google. However, the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It's not clear if any other extensions from the Chrome Web Store were resold and exhibit the same behavior.

According to the Chrome Web Store developer program policies, advertising is allowed in apps hosted in the store, but there are strict criteria for displaying ads on third-party websites: the behavior needs to be clearly disclosed to the user, there needs to be clear attribution of the ads' source, the ads must not interfere with any native ads or functionality of the website and the ads must not mimic or impersonate native ads or content on the third-party site

21/01/2014

HP Sticks thumb in Microsoft's eye

Hewlett-Packard today launched a new online promotion that discounts several consumer PCs by $150 when equipped with Windows 7, saying the four-year-old OS is "back by popular demand."

"The reality is that there are a lot of people who still want Windows 7," said Bob O'Donnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research, in a Monday interview. "This is a twist, though, and may appeal to those who said, 'I do want a new PC, but I thought I couldn't get Windows 7.'"

HP has not discarded Windows 8.1 -- the perception-plagued dual-UI operating system -- nor resurrected Windows 7 from the crypt: The PC seller, like every other OEM (original equipment manufacturer) in Microsoft's orbit, has never stopped selling Windows 7.

But HP was the first major OEM -- it was the world's second-largest in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to research firm IDC -- to blatantly market Windows 7 PCs to consumers since Windows 8's first few months, said O'Donnell.

HP's selection of Windows 7 consumer-grade machines is small, just five models: Two notebooks and three desktops, with discounted prices starting at $480 and topping out at $1,000. By comparison, HP listed 68 different Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 laptop, desktop and hybrid models on its for-consumer website Monday.

On the business side, HP and others, including No. 1 Lenovo and No. 3 Dell, continue to market Windows 7-powered PCs first, Windows 8 and 8.1 systems second, recognizing that corporations will stick with the 2009 OS for years to come.

From O'Donnell's viewpoint, HP's move was not so much an admission that Windows 8 and 8.1 are flawed -- even though he argued they are -- but an attempt to grab sales wherever it can after a year when PC shipments plunged 10% and are projected to slide again in 2014. By IDC's estimate, HP's U.S. shipments fell 12.3% last quarter compared to the year prior, while Dell's and Lenovo's climbed 5.6% and 10.8%, respectively.

Dell and Lenovo rely much less on sales to consumers, who have declined to buy new PCs as they shift to tablets, than does HP.

The promotion reminded O'Donnell and others of the dark days of Windows Vista, when customers avoided Windows 7's predecessor and instead clamored for the older Windows XP on their new PCs. Then, customers who had heard mostly negative comments about Vista from friends, family and the media, decided they would rather work with the devil they knew rather than the new one they did not.

"It's not a perfect comparison," said O'Donnell, of equating Windows 8 with Vista, "but the perception of Windows 8 is negative. I said early on that Windows 8 could clearly be Vista Version 2, and that seems to have happened."

Others, both professional analysts and independent pundits, have linked Vista and Windows 8 on the flop-o-meter.

"But the timing of this seems a bit odd. I thought vendors might have done this last year," said O'Donnell

- See more at: http://www.itnews.com/desktop-pcs/73434/hp-sticks-thumb-microsofts-eye-discounts-consumer-windows-7-pcs .WY1iXTia.dpuf

09/08/2013

Birth of royal baby used as lure in Blackhole Exploit Kit spam run.

18/12/2012