Likely pre-Pwn2Own Safari patch unlikely to stop three-time pwner
As part of the iTunes 10.2 update released on Wednesday, Apple patched an unprecedented number of vulnerabilities in WebKit, the Web-rendering engine that powers Safari and the iTunes Store. According to French security firm Vupen, Apple plans to add those patches to Safari 5 in an update set to be released before the Pwn2Own hacking competition at CanSecWest 2011. Still, security researcher Charlie Miller, known for "pwning" Safari for the last three years running, doesn't think a potential patch will present much of a challenge in his fourth attempt to crack Apple's browser.In the security bulletin for iTunes 10.2, Apple made note of 50 separate vulnerabilities related to "memory corruption issues." Those issues could enable a man-in-the-middle attack while browsing the iTunes Store, which Apple noted could lead to "unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution."
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New music industry plan: halt flow of money to pirate music sites
The international music trade group IFPI has found a way to shut down, it hopes, piratical iTunes-style websites operating in countries like Russia and the Ukraine—it wants to curtail their ability to accept major credit cards. Both the credit card companies and the UK police have agreed to act on the music industry complaints.IFPI has proudly announced a new copyright enforcement initiative. It boils down to this: IFPI will submit allegedly infringing websites to the London police department's Economic Crime Directorate. Once the division has "verified the evidence," it will pass the information to MasterCard and Visa.
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Report: DoJ looking into possible anti-WebM moves by MPEG LA
The US Department of Justice has reportedly launched an investigation into the MPEG Licensing Association (MPEG LA) to see whether the organization is trying to stifle competition from Google. The DoJ wouldn't comment publicly on the alleged investigation, but "people familiar with the matter" told the Wall Street Journal that the probe had already started, adding that the California Attorney General's office was also looking into MPEG LA's actions.MPEG LA is essentially a one-stop licensing shop for MPEG video codec standards. Last year, MPEG LA made waves when it announced a permanent moratorium on charging royalties for AVC/H.264 encoded video—a move that many believed was an effort to prevent Google's new WebM standard, built with technology it gained from acquiring On2 last year, from gaining any serious traction.
MPEG LA also suggested that the VP8 codec used by WebM was likely covered by patents held by its member companies, and last month, the group put out a call for patents essential to the VP8 algorithm with the intent of pooling them together and then licensing them out as a single bundle. The call was seen as an act of aggression against Google, as Google currently licenses WebM and V8 without payment of any royalties or any restrictions on usage.
If MPEG LA can form a pool of critical patents, then WebM implementors will suddenly find themselves deciding whether to drop WebM support, pay up, or risk fighting a patent infringement lawsuit. None of those prospects are particularly appealing—even paying up would be disadvantageous, since H.264 is seen by many as offering better quality. If you're going to shell out some cash, you may as well pay for the superior tech, which would leave WebM dead in the water.
That's the apparent reason behind the new DoJ investigation. Investigators are looking into whether MPEG LA or its member companies (which include Apple and Microsoft) are making an active effort to cripple adoption of WebM and V8, but MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn insists that's not the case. He told the Journal that the group was merely a "convenience store" for video patents and that it has no interest in which one(s) come out on top. That may be the official company line, but it certainly seems as if Horn indeed has some interest in getting under the competition's skin. "I can tell you: VP8 is not patent-free," Horn warned.
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Feature: 14-year old child pornographers? Sexting lawsuits get serious
If a middle-aged man meets a 14-year-old girl, coerces her to film a 10-second clip of herself masturbating, then intentionally releases that clip on the Internet, the man could clearly be charged under US federal law against the “sexual exploitation of children.” But what happens when the “man” is a 14-year-old boy who the 14-year old girl likes? And what if the "coercion" to make the film is the boy's threat not to befriend the girl in their new high school without the video? An ongoing federal court case in Kentucky is currently trying to answer some of the thorniest questions surrounding "sexting," the practice of sending sexually explicit photographs or videos to friends or lovers. Rules designed to stop predatory adults from taking advantage of children become murkier when both parties involved in sexting are kids; in fact, no federal precedent exists for these kinds of sexting suits against minors.
A new ruling in the Kentucky case will allow that lawsuit to move forward, however, with the judge deciding that even 14-year olds can be child pornographers.
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A virus so large it gets viruses
Last year, researchers uncovered the largest virus yet discovered. With a genome that is over 700,000 base pairs long, the CroV virus has more DNA than some bacteria. Fortunately, it infects a small, unicellular organism that's very distantly related to humans. Now, the same research team is back, this time announcing that they've discovered a virus that attacks CroV, and may just have given rise to all transposable elements, sometimes known as jumping genes.While studying CroV, the researchers discovered a much smaller virus that frequently accompanied it. The new virus, which they term Mavirus (for "Maverick virus") is still a healthy size, as far as most viruses are concerned, weighing in at just over 19,000 DNA bases, and encoding 20 genes. But Mavirus never appeared on its own; instead, it was only active in cells when the larger CroV was around, even though it could enter cells on its own. The authors conclude that it probably steals CroV's copying machinery for making more Maviruses; this is consistent with the fact that CroV infections slow down when Mavirus is around.
This isn't the first giant virus to be victimized by a smaller peer—there's even a term for this: virophage. But, when the authors looked at the 20 genes carried by Mavirus, they didn't look like the ones from another virophage; instead, they looked something like genes from a specific type of transposable element.
Transposable elements, or transposons, are stretches of DNA that can move around the genome, hopping from place to place. They're so effective at this that about a third of the human genome is composed of various forms of transposons, which don't appear to do anything very helpful, but require energy to copy.
The authors suggest, however, that transposons got their start by doing something useful. The Mavirus helps protect cells from CroV, so cells that permanently incorporate a copy into their genomes could be at a significant advantage. Once in the genome, however, the viral DNA would be free to evolve into something closer to a parasite. The authors predict that, if we look in the right places, we'll find virophages that correspond to most of the major families of transposons.
Science, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199412 (About DOIs).
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